Karen Griffin and her daughter Emma. Pic: Christy Farrell
A Gorey family’s struggle with the HSE to access psychiatric services for their lovely 10 years old daughter with special needs has reached crisis point after the child was found in a school, sitting under a desk, with a plastic knife she had found at the deli, trying to cut her wrist!
When she got home and was quizzed about the episode by her parents, they were shocked when she told them she wanted to “bleed and die.”
Karen Griffin is mother of three girls, Emma, (10), Caitlin, (8), and Roisín, (4), and sadly, Emma and Roisín have a rare organic-genetic brain disorder, which apparently affects only eight other children in the world.
“My little girl, Emma, has quite a lot of special needs. She has been diagnosed with ADHD, Aspersers’ syndrome, Dyspraxia and other minor issues,” said Karen.
“Emma is an extremely difficult child. She is prone to very violent behaviour, aggressive outbursts, constant crying and is very hyper active.
“On the other side she can appear to be a very shy and quiet child. “She has a fantastic personality and loves to get a laugh out of us.
“Her mood and behaviour is extremely unstable and she will switch from one to the other in a blink of the eye.”
The family has been left with no choice but to physically restrain Emma. They claim that things are getting worse.
“She will go into what I refer to as ‘a meltdown’ at least once a day,” said Karen, who added, “She will punch, kick, scream, bite, kick, throw objects at us and wreck the house.”
Over the past five years, different doctors have been ‘chopping and changing’ medication in the hope that Emma would start to calm down. It is a situation that the family are not comfortable with.
Meanwhile the mayhem continues in the family home.
At Crumlin Children’s Hospital, a psychiatrist agreed that Emma needed to be fully reassessed and taken off the medication and that she needed a bed somewhere to do this safely.
“She then informed me that Crumlin can’t give her a bed because they are a hospital for “sick” children and have no psychiatric beds.
“In fact, she told me there are very few places suitable for someone like Emma.
“She then told me they would contact the psychiatric team in Wexford and tell them to try to find Emma a bed.
When Karen and her husband, Liam, met up with the psychiatric social worker in Gorey, they were informed that no word had come from Crumlin.”
Their hearts began to sink even more.
Karen said sadly, “We are now a family at crisis point. We are living under the constant threat of Emma’s outbursts. She is an extremely difficult child.
“We have little or no outside help, no respite services and no input at home. We are entitled to this for both the girls but don’t get it due to cut backs. We have nowhere else to turn.”
Full story in THE GOREY ECHO.
