Elderly people in Cavan Monaghan frantic over what will happen to their adult children with special needs - Cllr Sarah O'Reilly, Cavan Monaghan
Elderly people in Cavan Monaghan who are parents to adult children with special needs and disabilities are living in a constant state of worry, stressing over what will happen to their children when they die.
That’s according to Aontú Cllr Sarah O’Reilly, a candidate for Cavan Monaghan in Friday’s General Election who says
“I know and am in regular contact with so many couples in their 70’s who are desperately worried for the future of their adult children. These are people who have lived with the lack of services and respite for decades, lived with the broken promises and the lack of progress and genuine help. They know there is absolutely no joined up thinking whatsoever for children and people with additional needs; from the time children are born there is a struggle to draw down the help and support they so badly need and deserve”.
“A constituent of mine whom I have known for years broke down in tears today as I spoke to her, She is frantic with worry over what will become of her adult son, and this is having a detrimental effect both on her own health and her quality of life”.
“We badly need more independent living facilities in this constituency. They are absolutely vital and provide much needed support and back up to families”. “They are a lifeline”.
“At the other end of the scale we have small children who don’t have their needs met. There is no respite for their families to get a much-deserved break; in Cavan there are three at most and in only four in Monaghan, in the newly opened centre there”.
“There is an illusion of help but when people try and secure it , they find it simply isn’t there and that is because there is no planning ahead, no real policy that will give people the help they deserve”
“ Everything is reactionary instead of being proactive”
“The situation with people with special needs is truly a crisis. Young children don’t have the supports and resources they need, and neither do older people. The only thing stopping their families from descending en masse onto the streets to protest is the fact that they can’t leave their children”.
“Family carers are saving the state a conservatively estimated €20 Billion a year. They deserve politicians who will fight for them and not treat them with disrespect and disdain as has been evidenced so plainly this week”.
