For autistic children, overcrowding and homelessness can be even tougher

Danielle Barlow has a five-year-old son who is autistic and nonverbal.

Since he was born, he has shared a bedroom with her and her teenage daughter in her mother’s house.

Councils can prioritise families for social housing when children have illnesses and disabilities, by granting them what is known as “medical priority”.

But Dublin City Council has twice turned down Barlow’s applications for “medical priority”, despite a letter from a paediatrician saying her son needed his own bedroom and outdoor space to “gain his full neurodevelopment potential”.

Barlow isn’t alone in her experience.

Denise Carr and her two children are now in homeless accommodation for the second time. Her 13-year-old son is autistic. They, too, have been refused medical priority.

“No child should be in homeless accommodation,” says Carr. But for those with autism, it’s even worse, she says.

They need stability, routine, quiet and space. “It says in his psychology report that he needs a stable environment,” says Carr.

People Before Profit Councillor Conor Reddy says it’s not clear why some families with autistic children are granted medical priority while others, of similar severity, are not.

Dublin City Council hasn’t responded to a query sent on Thursday, asking how it is decided.

Reddy says the council should carry out a review of its systems and consider introducing a new priority stream to prevent families with autistic children from ending up in homeless accommodation or living long-term in severely overcrowded conditions.

“There is a lot of talk about making Dublin an autism-friendly city,” he says, “but that doesn’t extend to the housing system.”

Refused priority

Carr and her two children had been homeless before for about six months, she says. That time she found a spacious house to rent, where they lived for around seven years.

In 2022, the owners decided to sell and issued her with an eviction notice.

It was then that she applied to Dublin City Council for medical priority for a social home, she says, based on her son’s autism and the unsuitability of homeless accommodation. But the council refused the application, she says.

“You did not demonstrate that your current accommodation is unsuitable by reason of a household member’s disability or illness and that the medical circumstances and housing conditions are exceptional,” says the refusal letter from the council.

“And that the management of the course of the illness will be significantly helped by a change of housing,” it says.

Carr says she thinks that the keyword is “current” and that the assessment only looked at her existing accommodation. “There was nothing physically wrong with our accommodation at the time.”

Since her notice period was up, she appealed the decision. But was refused again, she says.

Dublin City Council hasn’t responded to a query asking whether an assessment for medical priority should take account of the fact that the family cannot remain in the current, suitable, accommodation.

Since then, she’s become homeless again, and she and her kids are no longer in that nice house, but in homeless accommodation.

Homeless accommodation is completely unsuitable for autistic children, Carr says. Her son’s behaviour is worsening, she says.

“He has extreme emotional behaviour. It’s like they didn’t believe me that this is how it affects children,” she says.

The children’s schools are over an hour away from the accommodation and Carr works. Getting them to school and onwards to work each day on time is very challenging, she says.

The family is currently number 202 on the social housing list. Without medical priority they could be in homeless accommodation for a long time

Says Carr: “They are not looking at the mental trauma or the deterioration.”

Danielle Barlow says she joined the housing list 15 years ago, before her children were born, but that she has reared them both sleeping in one room in her mother’s house. Her adult brother also lives in the house, she says.

Sharing one room is unfair to her daughter, who is now 14, she says. It is not the same as sharing with a sibling who does not have autism. Her son has meltdowns, she says.

Her mother is under more stress, she says, and can’t invite all of her family over at once because her son can’t handle crowds.

“He used to bang his head off the walls if someone came into the house,” she says. “He gets overwhelmed.”

Barlow says her mother has been a massive help to her, but has reached the end of what she can offer and has asked her to leave by December.

But her place on the housing list is going in the wrong direction. Last year, she was number 14. Now, she is number 16, she says.

Barlow applied for medical priority in 2022 and again earlier this year and was refused both times, she says.

She sent a letter from a consultant paediatrician at Children’s Hospital Ireland in Temple Street.

She also sent a note from a senior occupational therapist, which said her son’s “difficulties are pervasive and complex in nature”, and recommended he should have access to his own bedroom and an enclosed garden.

In June, Dublin City Council refused her medical priority, issuing a letter with the exact same wording as Carr’s.

She had failed to show her current situation was unsuitable, that the medical circumstances were exceptional, and that the management of the illness would be helped by a change of housing, it said.

“Re-housing won’t cure autism,” says Barlow, “but it will help the management of it.”

What is the solution?

At the full council meeting on 7 October, Reddy, the People Before Profit councillor, put in a question, asking what protocols are in place in homeless services to meet the needs of people with autism, intellectual and other disabilities, particularly children.

“Are there specific provisions made for suitable emergency accommodation? Are outcomes measured for this specific vulnerable group?” he asked.

In response, Mary Hayes, director of the Dublin Region Homeless Executive (DRHE), said: “Families can be considered for placement into a family Hub with a sensory room and child support workers or can be referred to Focus Family HAT [homeless action team] team who also can refer to child support workers.”

Housing Support Officers can also assist with social housing applications and medical priority applications, she said.

Reddy says that as far as he knows there is one family hub in Dublin with a sensory room. The council provides “own door” apartment accommodation to families if it is available.

Reddy says the council should review support for families with special needs in housing and homeless services. “I think we maybe need to look at how we can establish a different pathway,” he says. “Obviously that raises issues of fairness.”

Medical priority is aimed at families with physical disabilities and those with terminal illnesses, he says.

But for autistic children “it’s their developmental potential that they might not reach if they haven’t got the supports necessary”, he says. “That is what is at stake here.”