Siodhna's wheelchair problems being resolved

Siodhna with her social worker Ashling (left) and Antoinette Buckley.

Longtime resident of the Bridge Camphill Community Siodhna, well known to many Kilcullen people, has had severely reduced mobility over the past year because her wheelchairs needed major refurbishment or replacement.

Both her manual and powered wheelchairs are ten years old, and for some time have not been fit for purpose, with worn coverings and protruding springs making them almost unusable. This also made it difficult or impossible for Siodhna to do things independently around the Bridge community as she had been used to. Among her regular jobs was delivering messages from the Manna shop to other houses on the campus.

"I felt that I was no longer any use around the community," she said. "It was like taking my feet away, my freedom, my independence."

But despite repeated requests to the Central Remedial Clinic for an appointment to be fitted for new moulds for the chairs, her social worker Ashling was getting nowhere. She was told by the CRC that funding from the HSE 'hadn't been sanctioned'.

Following representations by Fianna Fail local election candidate Antionette Buckley and Kildare South TD Fiona O'Loughlin, the CRC advised at the end of March that Siodhna is now 'a high priority case' and two weeks ago she had her first appointment with them. She has now been told that she will have both her remoulded manual wheelchair and new powered wheelchair by the end of June.

"She can then go back to working in the community which she very much enjoys," Antoinette Buckley says.

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