Children at the Kolbe Special School are being denied physical education and won’t receive any until after Christmas at the earliest due to lack of space.
It is understood the parents of Kolbe Special School received a letter recently stating that due to the serious lack of space and health and safety concerns, their children won’t be receiving PE until after Christmas at least.
This has prompted parents to organise meetings and seek political support to try to resolve the issue.
This school is the only school for children with severe special needs in Laois and Kildare.
The children are age 5 to 18, all of their disabilities are severe, many of the children in wheelchairs or reduced mobility but all needing PE.
The physiotherapist and Occupational therapist retired from the school over the past couple of years without being replaced. Services such as these are already are in short supply and high demand in Laois.
Parent Genevieve Finane Fagan outlined the difficulties on social media.
Play
“Many of our children cannot simply go out and run around to play,” she said.
“PE is part of the curriculum – not only that it is vital to our children’s state of health. If you were in a chair – wheelchair for 5/6 hours straight with no exercise no movement, imagine how uncomfortable you would be – how stiff you would be?,” she said.
“This is not good enough. If you had degenerative muscle disease or a genetic disease and need this exercise to help your muscles from spasming or from being in pain how would you cope?” she said.
“A lot of our children are non-verbal, they can’t tell us they are in pain or sore so this impacts on their behaviour,” she said.
“None of the staff in Kolbe Special School are to blame in this, they do an amazing job every day going above and beyond for our children,” she said.
SEE ALSO – Laois farmers protesting in Guinness at the price of barley
The LaoisToday 2017 Annual is now on sale in bookshops and newsagents around the county – this is where you can buy it
