Children waiting well over a year for speech and language therapy

Children in Meath referred for speech and language therapy face waits of well over a year in parts of the county, with a staggering 84 week wait time for children in the Trim and Dunboyne area for an initial assessment.

Figures obtained from the HSE by the Meath Chronicle also show that over 1,000 children in Meath are currently on the waiting list to be seen by a SLT.

The huge backlog would appear to in part be down to difficulties in recruiting staff. Of the almost 18 whole time equivalent posts allocated to Meath, there are currently six vacancies.

The longest wait time is for children is in the Network Six area of South West Meath, which takes in Trim and Dunboyne, where the average wait time is 84 weeks. There are currently 300 children on the waiting list in this area.

The wait time for the Network 4 area of Central Meath including Navan and Slane is 60 weeks with 254 currently on the waiting list there. There are 4.6 posts approved for this area with two of them currently vacant.

Network 2, which includes the north Meath area, Kells, Kingscourt and Ardee has an average wait time of 49 weeks. There are 3.69 Speech and Language Therapist posts allocated to this area with one of those posts now vacant. There are 132 on the waiting list for this area.

The shortest wait time, which still comes in at an average of 43 weeks is for Network 5, east Meath which takes in Dunshaughlin, Ashbourne, Laytown and Duleek. There are 6.3 SLT posts allocated to this area with two of these posts currently not filled. The number of the children on the waiting list for this area is the largest of the four networks at 397.

Between the four network areas, there are currently 1,083 on the list awaiting appointments.