Schools alarmed at axing of funds for therapists

Students with the highest needs in New Zealand will lose some of the therapists that make it possible for them to attend school under the Government's cost cutting.

Faye Philp, the principal of Carlson School for Cerebral Palsy, the largest school for physically disabled students in New Zealand, is very concerned about how her students and staff will cope if it has to lay off its therapists next year.

Ten years ago the Government recognised that occupational therapists and physiotherapists were essential to learning in schools that had a large number of students with high needs. The funding of $2.5 million allowed Mrs Philp to employ 3.8 therapists to help the 62 students.

But the Government has axed that additional funding, meaning Carlson School will have to lay off staff that it can no longer afford.

Mrs Philp worries about the wider impact of removing the funding, and said it could potentially result in a higher number of hospital admissions.

"Unless [my] students have regular therapy input their health will deteriorate and their ability to learn will diminish," she said.

She has been talking to Ministry of Education representatives and has requested a sit-down with Associate Minister of Education Heather Roy but said yesterday that a reversal of the cuts seemed unlikely.

Mike O'Reilly, the principal of Mt Roskill Intermediate School, said the school had received little in the way of an explanation for the cuts.

His school runs a special unit for 24 students and gets additional funding for 2 therapists.

He suspected the Government saw the cuts as a "tidying of loose ends", but did not anticipate the impact on physically disabled students.

"I just think it's very short-sighted, not well thought-out at all. Those kids will not be able to attend school as often, because they will be more likely to be sick, and therefore their learning is going to suffer," he said. Some special needs units faced closure because of the cuts to the special therapist funding, he said.

And it was not realistic to place these high-needs children in mainstream classrooms because they could not afford necessary therapy for individual students - in a unit the therapists are shared.

"Units, whether you philosophically like them or not, are a really good compromise and something that we can afford as a country and I really value them highly," Mr O'Reilly said.

Mrs Roy said just 23 schools had received the therapist funding and children at schools that had not received it did not seem to be adversely affected.