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MORE THAN 50 posts in the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHs) remain unfilled, according to recent figures provided by the HSE which also show an increase in the demand for services and ever growing waiting lists.
The figures for March show there were 1,259 referrals of children accepted by community mental health teams.
Though 232 development posts were allocated to CAMHs from the 2012 and 2013 investment – so technically, the money should be there to hire people – the HSE said 54 of these are still vacant, claiming it is working with local teams to ensure they are filled.
It comes at a time when demand for the services provided are on the rise with a ten per cent increase in referrals accepted in March and a further 18 per cent increase in the number of new cases seen when compared to the same period last year.
Last Friday, Childline also revealed it had been contacted over 664,000 times by children seeking help in 2013 and said the number of times its services were contacted about mental health was a cause for concern.
Waiting
The waiting list for children has also grown to 2,943 – up eight per cent on March last year. The HSE said some 72 per cent of referrals were offered a first appointment and seen within three months.
A recent report from CAMHs found that children in Dublin are most likely to be seen within three months while the HSE South list had the highest number of children waiting longer than 12 months to see a therapist.
Catherine Joyce, Head of Advocacy for children’s charity Barnardos, told TheJournal.ie that her organisation has encountered CAMHs services which have “closed their waiting lists to anyone except the most urgent and serious cases”.
“This has meant services being denied to children who, in our opinion, are in dire need of mental health support and who are being put at risk by the lack of access to the services,” she said.
In one case, a child of 9 who had been expelled from school because his behaviour was increasingly putting himself and others at risk was denied a service because he did not meet the threshold for intervention and the waiting list was otherwise closed.
‘Children and families are suffering’
Joyce said the staffing levels in HSE mental health services for children and adolescents are just 44 per cent of the level recommended by the ‘A Vision for Change‘ report published by the expert group on mental health back in 2006.
The HSE figures were provided to TD Thomas Broughan who said he was concerned about the increase in waiting times for children referred to CAMHs to obtain an appointment.
He said the increased demand is “particularly worrying” in light of the HSE’s admission that only 178 of the 232 posts have been filled. “It appears that the CAMHS are under serious pressure and children and families are suffering because of long delays in accessing vital mental health services,” he said.
The HSE did not respond to a request for comment on action being taken to fill the vacant posts.
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Warehouse in Ireland please. Having to wait for parcels to ship from UK is not good enough.
Amazons high tech jobs are based in Dublin. The companies warehouses are based in Britain. It’s cheaper than Ireland.
Yeah that 1 day prime service is shocking! If I order something now I won’t have it until tomorrow ffs!
Amazon consider Ireland as part of the UK geographicaly for business reasons while for delivery reasons they consider NI and The Republic to be the same.I worked there and it used to provide endless hours of fun trying to explain the situation to idiot ‘nationalists and unionists’ who would take offence to this.Then added to that for tax they are registered in Lux.Most likely they will open a hub here at some point but most items will still have to come from the UK. There just isn’t the population here to justify a warehouse system big enough to hold 17m items.
More people out of a job
“hiring 80,000 seasonal workers to meet the coming onslaught of holiday orders.”
are they? some might be out of a job running around the floor picking items. but someone has to look after the robots, repair them and even build them so jobs are created as well.
Simon,that’s a very short term view.
how so. remember back in the 80′s when computers were being brought into the office and work place and we were all supposed to be out of jobs?
Simon, they are doing a physical job that only people could do. You can be very sure that any of these working in these huge spaces will have a very long lifespan unlike anything that will be for sale in the future in PC World etc for the home.
Did you actually read the article?
” They are doing a physical job that only people could do” — bit of a contradiction there
I work in this area (electrical / mechanical IT support) if they have 3000 robots then they need a good load of people to back them up. I would very much doubt that 3000 people were let go to be replaced by 3000 machines.
Machines that run for 24 hours a day need weekly / monthly PM’s. Software upgrades, cleaning and replacing. so while they have a long life span they are continually being looked after unlike your house hold appliances that only get service when they break down,
Support jobs are also much better paid than picking jobs. And at the end of the day, shouldn’t we be using robots and machines to do the more mundane tasks and upgrading our human work force for the better.
Simon the robots will become self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th and repair themselves. Only a matter of time.
Jason,Simon. The PEOPLE that did this job last year are highly unlikely to be be servicing these robots. They have most likely been told that there is no work for them. Not everyone has the capacity to up skill. Amazon and those who follow them have not got the welfare of their seasonal workers in mind and are not trying impress ye, they have long term wage bill reductions driving this practice.
Its called progress….
Jesusdittyfcukinchrist they took are jobs !
To help the employees, who are they kidding. To CUT THE WAGE BILL.
PR*cks
Johnny 5
Irish Water is currently drafting up an army of robots in the form of precision electronic meters to “help” distribute something which is of a basic right.
Correction: “help” control something which is of a basic right.
Ffs, read this so as not to hear about IW, not everything should be brought back to water. Getting very boring now.
My thoughts exactly.
What are your thoughts, pray tell?
I am thinking he was just missing an ellipses…
His thoughts are centred around precision.
With everything getting automated and a growing world population, what happens when there aren’t enough jobs for everybody? A genuine question….maybe we will be starship troopers.
have your say