Madam, - Last Saturday's Irish Times was dominated by the Budget, but the picture of David Foley on the front of the Weekend Review had more impact than a thousand words. For me, a primary teacher who worked with David from 1998 to 1999, it was the most poignant and distressing news feature I have ever read.
Carl O'Brien's article dealt mainly with the last three years of David's life and how the care system failed him. Yet, from the time he came to our school at about eight years old, it was obvious that he was a neglected and troubled little boy. His transfer to a new school meant that there was little known of him or his family's previous history. He was just another troubled child leaving one school for another, and not many questions were asked or reports presented. In our school he was one of the many troubled and seriously under-achieving children we had to deal with. As an intervention, the school assigned him to the Dóchas project, whose remit was to keep at-risk children in education, by engaging with their families. He should have been involved in this project until he left primary school and would have been supported with the transition into second level.
At the time I met David, I could see little future for him. On one occasion he told he thought about killing himself. I made this information known to the relevant persons. As far as I am aware there was no social worker engaged with or monitoring his family at this time. For myself and the many other teachers who have worked with David and his likes, there is a terrible sense of powerlessness and anger that we can do nothing apart from reporting our concerns. The response to this is usually that no action is taken, nothing happens.
For myself and all the teachers who knew and worked with David Foley, the photograph and the name in last weekend's paper were heartbreaking and disturbing. I can ask myself if I could have done more back then, but the answer is no. If a child has the misfortune to be born into extremely difficult circumstances, there isn't a lot that can be done to rescue him or her. What we really need to do is to find an effective way to help parents who are emotionally, socially and economically impoverished to rear the children that they bring into this world. There seems to be little political will or vision to address this very fundamental issue. - Yours, etc,
ANNA LYONS,
Carrick-on-Shannon,
Co Leitrim.