Life in homeless accommodation is hard enough, but it’s desperate for parents with kids with extra needs or health problems

Nicole Hennessey is homeless for a second time – and this time her life is even more complicated.

That’s because she has been placed in accommodation outside her area. Health support services she battled for years to get may discharge her children because they currently live in the wrong area.

Hennessey’s voice becomes shaky as she tries to explain the struggle to raise five children – four of whom have health issues – while living on the fourth floor of a homeless hostel with shared cooking facilities and no lift.

“It’s just hard, it’s so, so hard,” says Hennessey, on Friday, standing on the first step of a building on Hatch Street, just down the road from her hostel.

“If I don’t get put back on northside accommodation my kids are going to lose their services, and I have to re-start on this side,” says Hennessey.

Her areas of choice for a permanent social home are mostly on the northside, she says, so if they do switch areas and then get a home, they would need to be re-referred back again.

How long Hennessey and her children will have to wait to be housed is uncertain.

She fought for a year to get medical priority on the social housing list, she says, which the council finally granted her in June 2024.

But even so, she is still in the same position on the waiting lists for both three- and four-bedroom homes in her three areas of choice.

Kids with needs

The Dublin Region Homeless Executive (DRHE) doesn’t track the number of families in homeless accommodation who have children with health issues, special needs or disabilities.

“The HSE provides in-reach health supports to families accessing EA [emergency accommodation], so they may be able to provide information to you on the same,” says a spokesperson for the DRHE.

Hennessey says that she isn’t aware of any visiting support workers from the HSE.

Two of Hennessey’s children suffer from faltering growth – which used to be called failure to thrive. They struggle to gain weight and are smaller and lighter than other children their age.

Their dietician has already stopped seeing them, she says, because they are outside their area.

Two of the children have mental health and behavioural issues. One has a sensory processing disorder, global development delay and severe anxiety.

The baby also has kidney problems and has been in and out of hospital.

Her five-year-old has recurring croup and the baby has kidney problems. They have both been in and out of hospital lately, she says.

It took years to get the children diagnosed, says Hennessey, and now their services are at risk.

A letter from a senior psychologist at the primary care psychology service in Clontarf says they cannot continue to treat the five-year-old, who has behavioural issues, if the family isn’t living in their area.

“In summary, the family are in urgent need of appropriate permanent accommodation,” says the psychologist, in the letter.

From bad to worse

Around five years ago Hennessey was homeless with four of her children. That time they were put up in a hostel in Clontarf, she says.

She was number six on the area list for social housing in Smithfield but, desperate to escape homelessness, she took a sub-standard private-rented home in Ballymun, she says.

A council inspection report shows the rented home failed on 20 of the minimum standards.

It was in a poor state of structural repair, with holes in walls, doors and ceilings. There was mould, poor ventilation, exposed electrical wiring, and no central heating.

Several professionals advocated for the family to be re-housed at the time, as the substandard living conditions were affecting the children’s health, letters show.

The dietician said that inadequate cooking facilities were contributing to the children’s low weight and height.

But living in the hostel is worse, says Hennessey. “My kids’ health is suffering far worse in here,” she says. She struggles to get to use the cookers at meal times because there are so many people living in the hostel, she says.

Hennessey says she has repeatedly asked Dublin City Council to transfer her to accommodation with better access to cooking facilities.

“Every single day, every day, all I want is a transfer,” she says. “I need somewhere that I can actually go downstairs and cook a proper dinner.”

A keyworker at the HSE’s Children’s Disability Network Team wrote that the 10-year-old with the sensory processing disorder needs sufficient indoor and outdoor space to play to self-regulate.

The housing situation was “adversely affecting his development”, says the letter. The conditions are now even more cramped in the hostel, with six of them living in two rooms, says Hennessey.

She recently made a friend in the hostel, Julie Dickson, who is also homeless with her five children. It’s much worse for Hennessey and her children because of the multiple health issues, says Dickson.

“It’s horrible the way my family is living as well, but I can survive that,” says Dickson. “At least my kids are healthy.”

Stuck in limbo

It isn’t only in Dublin that parents say homeless services and councils don’t adequately take into account the extreme impact of homelessness and instability on kids with health problems and disabilities.

Caroline Hanley lives with her two adult children, a foster child aged three and another foster child aged four.

Her four-year old has “extremely complex needs with an acquired brain injury, vision impairment, epilepsy, development delay, autism”, says a letter from the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Dún Laoghaire.

Hanley joined the social housing list 14 years ago. In the meantime, she’s been renting a house.

When her landlady decided to sell the house last year she offered it first to Offaly County Council, says Hanley.

But the council refused, because Hanley was paying the rent without help from the rent subsidy HAP, she says.

She received a notice of termination in January and told the council.

Last Thursday her notice was up, and Offaly County Council hadn’t offered her any form of accommodation, she said that day. “It’s madness at this stage. There is still no word from them.”

When children have special needs, they need routine, says Hanley. “He is having meltdowns the last few days as his routine is all over the place,” she said last Thursday of one of her children.

“I’m ready to crack, I’ve been moving stuff all week,” she said. She hired a moving van for Saturday to put stuff in storage but still didn’t know where she and the children were going to go.

A friend could accommodate them for a few nights but no longer, as the friend has a child with cerebral palsy, said Hanley. “It’s very good of her to even offer, but it’s definitely only for a few nights.”

Hanley had to get ready to go because her landlady had builders booked to carry out essential repairs, starting Monday.

She would be delighted if the council bought this house, she said. “I like the area and the kids are used to it.”

On Friday, Hanley said she hadn’t heard anything about where to go. But later that day, around an hour after press queries, she got a call from the council staff saying that they were in contact with her landlady and trying to find her a place.

Then on Monday, council staff said they will purchase the house, she says.

Hanley says that her landlady re-arranged with the builders to come back at a later date. On Tuesday afternoon, she started unpacking and arranged to get her beds back out of storage.

“It’s a good outcome for me, I just wish it was the same for more people,” she says.

Offaly County Council didn’t respond to queries sent Friday about whether it grants medical priority to people with autism in their household and whether it has any emergency accommodation available.

Is medical priority working?

Each council has a system of prioritising those households which are most desperately in need of housing but what counts for medical priority depends on the council, says Mike Allen, director of advocacy with Focus Ireland.

The system of medical priority in theory provides a solution to the problems faced by children with special needs living in homeless accommodation, he says, as it appears to be an independent medical process, with evidence considered by a panel.

But as the housing crisis deepens, the threshold for medical priority appears to be getting higher, he says. “The threshold for it depends on how many cases there are.”

People are often surprised by the decisions they receive, he says. Someone with life-threatening cancer, who is living in emergency accommodation could be turned down for medical priority because re-housing wouldn’t necessarily cure cancer, he says.

“It’s not designed to be humanitarian,” says Allen. “So it’s trickier than you might think.”

There is no doubt that homeless accommodation is completely unsuitable for families with children with disabilities or special needs, he says.

“There is quite clearly an issue with the number of families with severe autism who are in homeless accommodation,” he says. “It’s clearly not a good place for them to be.”