Some good news: vaccinated, a review of the system for vaccinating clinically extremely vulnerable 16 - 18 year olds in Haringey - but is it enough?
Following intervention from HealthWatch Haringey after our blog, there has been a review of the system; however other aspect of support during the pandemic have been sorely missing, leaving us feeling that children with disabilities and their families were abandoned in Haringey in the pandemic.
Vaccinated - and a system review!
As a result of the blog Mike Wilson, our HealthWatch Haringey director, raised a concern with the Haringey Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG). They have since reviewed their policy for clinically extremely vulnerable 16 to 18 year olds (on the shielded patients list).
This action took Haringey CCG less than two days to turn around, so kudos to them.
Support for over 50 year olds and clinically extremely vulnerable adults in Haringey
But help was not forthcoming for clinically extremely vulnerable children
If I have a concern about the help we have received it is this, we have had an abundance of support as older adults and as clinically extremely vulnerable adults. However, there seems to have been none as parents of a clinically extremely vulnerable child nor as the parent of a child with special educational needs and disabilities.
The help given by Haringey's Children with Disabilities Team (CWDT) was described in the Tottenham Community Press in August 2020: Haringey Council says that since lockdown,
the CWDT has been contacting parents of
children who have an allocated social worker
in the CWDT, twice a week, offering them
support. This support, it says has included
provision of food, laptops and opportunities to access education.
The council also adds that a multi-agency
forum that includes staff from health, education and adult services meet weekly to
review the support offered to these children with allocated social workers, based
on the assessment of need.
Were children with disabilities abandoned in the lockdown in Haringey?
So I am left wondering if it could have been arranged for Connected Communities to have reached out to the parents and carers of clinically extremely vulnerable children, for example, or if something similar to the support we have been offered from Circle could have been put in place - or something else.
Why were our needs deemed sufficient for help and support as older or clinically extremely vulnerable adults - but not because of the needs of our fragile clinically extremely vulnerable paraplegic child, who in all likelihood would be six times more likely to have a fatal outcome due to his learning disability (Public Health England) - why is that need not enough?
