Buddy Bear School is Facing Risk of Closure

By Emily Moulton

Funding for the Buddy Bear Trust in Dungannon is drying up and the independent special needs school may not survive unless urgent action is taken.

Chairman Brendan McConville is worried the school may not make it past the end of this school year because it only has two students and is now taking his concerns to Stormont.

Mr McConville was due to meet with DUP leader Ian Paisley, who has been a supporter of the school since it opened in 1989.

Buddy Bear is a non-profit independent school which specialises in Conductive Education, a holistic practice which uses therapy to educate children with motor neurone disorders such as cerebral palsy.

It relies heavily on student fees which are paid by the relative Education and Library Boards.

For the past 10 years, three of the province’s Education and Library Boards have sent children to the facility. However, in the past few years the numbers have dwindled, causing concern amongst the school’s staff including principal Ildiko Veres.

Their concerns have been further heightened by claims the Southern Education and Library Board are preventing a six-year-old cerebral palsy sufferer from attending the school because of red tape.

The board is insisting Keiran Johnstone’s condition be reassessed before it agrees to fund his placement at the school.

Keiran’s mother, Ann Marie, moved to Northern Ireland from Newcastle last October after being told about the school.

Ms Johnstone claims she was assured the board would fund Keiran’s placement at the school and cannot understand why the SELB is refusing to accept Keiran’s statement of special needs, which was awarded via the High Court in England in 2004.

A spokesman from the SELB said because of legislation, the board was required to carry out its own assessment.

“If a child moves to Northern Ireland from England with a statement of special educational needs, the Board has a legal duty to commence the statutory assessment process, with parental consent,” he said.

It is understood the re-assessment process takes 18 weeks.

Mr McConville said he was shocked to learn about Ms Johnstone’s plight and that the Boards were not telling parents Buddy Bear existed.

“We only discovered that the Boards were applying the letter of the law when dealing with parents of children suffering from cerebral palsy/motor disorders and only telling them about grant aided schools,” he said.

“The Buddy Bear Trust had thought that the Boards and the Health Trusts had a moral responsibility to give parents as much information as possible to enable them to make informed decisions.”

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