The mother of a child who received inappropriate and excessive medication under the care of North Kerry CAMHS says her son is receiving no medical or financial supports from the HSE.
‘Mary’, not her real name, says her son has damaged his liver, kidneys, and bowels, and has acute stomach pains, all as a result of the treatment he received from the North Kerry Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services.
She says a consultant has told her that her son should never have been on medication in the first place, and separately she was told he was on three times’ the appropriate daily dose.
Mary’s son was one of the patients in North Kerry CAMHS whose care was reviewed as part of a random audit of 50 files.
Consultants who carried out the audit raised potential concerns in 16 of the 50 files, which sparked an independent, lookback review of all files currently open in North Kerry CAMHS – approximately 300.
This lookback review began in June, and the HSE aims for it to be completed by the end of the year.
Mary says that in February, the HSE promised her that her son would receive urgent medical support because of his condition by the time the audit was done on his file.
She says this never happened, and he is also not eligible for the compensation scheme currently available to patients in South Kerry CAMHS.
Cork Kerry Community Healthcare says the compensation scheme was approved by government for individuals identified in the Maskey Report as having suffered harm as a result of care from South Kerry CAMHS.
It says it cannot pre-empt the finding of the current lookback review into North Kerry CAMHS, and whether the expert review will determine harm was done, while any compensation scheme is a matter for government.
