The teaching of basic skills for disabled children is expected to be outsourced by the government to the NGO Inspire, according to sources.
The Health Ministry issued a call for tenders last January to outsource occupational therapy services offered at the Child Development and Assessment Unit, which is the government department responsible for delivering the service.
A report last year highlighted a backlog within the unit, as hundreds of children had to wait for months between one appointment and another. A ministry spokesman on Thursday confirmed the tender would be adjudicated in “the coming weeks”, noting that there was only one bidder. The sources indicated the sole bidder was NGO Inspire that was formed following the merger of Eden Foundation and Razzett tal-Ħbiberija, which works with disabled children.
When contacted, Inspire CEO Nathan Farrugia confirmed that Inspire had applied to provide the CDAU with occupational therapy services, through which disabled children are taught basic skills. He said outsourcing was a positive government initiative because it helped bridge the gap between what people needed and what society could afford to provide. Mr Farrugia said that, in future, other services at the CDAU, such as physiotherapy and child psychology, should also be outsourced. The situation within the CDAU was again brought to public attention during a Labour Party press conference on Thursday. The party’s spokesman for children, Justyne Caruana, said hundreds of children with special needs had been waiting to receive therapeutic services due to the backlog at the unit. She called on the health authorities to take immediate action to find a solution to the situation, which was leaving disabled children without the care they needed.
The CDAU came under fire in an internal government document released towards the end of last year. The report, drawn up by a government-appointed task force, revealed that some disabled children were made to wait more than a year for their first appointments with the unit. In January, the parents of five children who use Inspire’s services wrote an open letter to the Health Minister calling on the government to provide effective and continuous therapy by funding services offered by NGOs, like Inspire. They said therapeutic services offered by the CDAU were inadequate and called on the government to take action to ensure children like theirs had access to efficient therapy.