Breaking point: Mother battles to get help for son [IrishExaminer]
- Published: 07 September 2011
JACK McNIFFE is a unique child.
The 6-year-old from Kildare has the rare, degenerative Cinca syndrome, and is the only known child in the world to have both that and Down Syndrome.
But in another way, he’s not unique at all.
Jack started school last week and despite requiring a full-time special needs assistant (SNA), he instead receives just one hour of SNA a day, which he shares with seven other special needs children who also began school in his class at St Raphael’s special school in Celbridge, Co Kildare.
Now the fear is that further cutbacks in SNAs will exacerbate the problems already being experienced by parents like Jack’s mother, Aisling. "It is a pretty devastating illness, there is no cure, you can only manage it — and we are only barely managing it," she says of Jack’s health condition, the full name of which is chronic infantile neurologic cutaneous and articular syndrome.
Full Story: www.examiner.ie
