Health Minister Joe Cassar is looking into “various options” to improve the situation at the Child Development Assessment Unit, which recently came under fire in an internal government document.
A report drawn up by a government appointed taskforce revealed that some children with disabilities were made to wait more than a year for their first appointments with the government’s unit.
Asked for his reaction to the leaked report’s conclusions, a ministry spokesman said: “The Minister is aware there are challenges that have to be addressed at the CDAU. It is for this reason that he appointed the taskforce to analyse the current situation and propose possible solutions. At this point, the ministry is looking into various options to improve the situation. It is premature to comment further.”
The spokesman added, however, that the leaked report was not final and had been circulated to all taskforce members for their “corrections, feedback and approval prior to submission to the minister”.
The report described the waiting lists as “unacceptable” and “excessive”, and pointed out that parents were forced to resort to paying organisations such as Inspire and Equal Partners to receive services.
Although meetings with the unit’s medical team did not take long to organise, first appointments for other disciplines, such as occupational therapy and psychological services, took months and, in some cases, more than a year, the report said.
The report called for the waiting times to be addressed as soon as possible but said government psychologists were not in a position to take on any of the workload.
Instead, the task force suggested the CDAU focus on improving what it did best – initial assessment of all children. But follow-up and ongoing therapy should be “devolved” to third parties like Inspire and Equal Partners, which required more funding and support from the government.
Meanwhile, Lino Spiteri, Inspire president and former minister, told The Times that the report of the task force was “very important” and demonstrated that “early focused action” had to be taken by the government. He said organisations like Inspire could only build upon the first steps which had to be taken by the CDAU.
“Inspire is not in the business of trying to make clients pay. It builds upon the early work done by the government and has the ability to follow up positively as may be necessary.”
After first assessment, the organisations could take care of all follow-ups if this was supported by the government, which remained responsible for providing the necessary funding, even if financial resources were scarce, he said.
Writing in a Talking Point in The Times on Tuesday, Tony Zammit Cutajar said he was “horrified” by the report and called on the Prime Minister to intervene immediately to “remedy this shameful situation”.
He called on the Health Minister to ensure children on such waiting lists should from next year be able to opt for private assessments to be refunded by the government.
“If each assessment costs €250 and 200 children are assessed, the cost to the taxpayer would be €50,000, equivalent to the pay rise of seven parliamentarians,” he pointed out.