THE Belfast Trust is refusing to sign off on a wheelchair to allow a disabled teenager to travel to London for treatment, which he requires due to its own medical negligence.
Conleth Pierce (17) suffered a non-traumatic leg fracture shortly after undergoing hip surgery five years ago.
The Hannahstown teen lives with a number of severely debilitating conditions including cerebral palsy, which decreases bone density. He also suffers from epilepsy, blindness, and a bone condition known as osteopenia.
His family took a legal case against Belfast Trust after it failed to identify a femur fracture that has since healed improperly and has compounded his difficulties.
As part of its remedial action, Belfast Trust has agreed to pay for Conleth to travel to the Bobath Centre in London for specialist treatment. However, the statutory body has ignored his family's pleas to approve access to a wheelchair that will enable him to travel.
With Conleth progressing into adulthood, his current wheelchair will eventually need to be replaced. It is also too big to fit on to an aeroplane.
Conleth's mum, Lisa Pierce, said the charity New Life has agreed to provide a smaller, temporary wheelchair for the two weeks Conleth is in London. But the charity requires approval from Occupational Therapists (OT) at the Trust, which is refusing to sign off on the wheelchair loan.
"We've fought them, everybody has written to the Trust on our behalf," she explained.
"Then they suggested that he should bring his own chair. We told them that chair cannot go on an aeroplane, it cannot be taken apart easily – it would actually mean going in with a screwdriver and taking the seat off.
"We went round and round with them for a few months, but they wouldn't back down."
The Pierce family secured funding for a new chair for Conleth through the Hospice, however, it will not be here in time for his London medical trip in August.
A Belfast Trust spokesperson said the organisation has contacted the Pierce family "to discuss their concerns and clarify the clinical decisions we have taken to ensure Conleth receives the most appropriate and highest quality of care."
Mrs Pierce told the Andersonstown she has had multiple engagements with the Trust, which "won't budge" and keeps "moving the goalposts".
"They say they don't do letters to charities, then when they look like they might move on that they come back and say the chair doesn't meet his needs," she said.
"What we're trying to say is that we know it's not the optimum chair for him, but it is the best of the chairs that we can manage on an aeroplane. It is for a limited amount of time, it's for the two weeks he'll be in London. Our contention is that surely it will be better if the OT to have some input into a chair. Previously we've had to go off and source a chair that we have thought best meets his needs and best meets our needs.
"In an ideal world we know he needs 'X, Y and Z', but the chair that he has – the Wheelchair Centre have told us – doesn't meet all of his needs. We cannot actually get a chair that meets all of his requirements.
"I understand that they have (protocols) in place, but can't they override it for certain circumstances, particularly when there's a genuine need there?" she continued.
"It's not that he's going to London for stupid things and over to see a show. He's going over to access specific treatment that we can't get here and that he needs because of their negligence. They're funding it because they know that they made a mistake and they're trying to rectify it, but he can't get over unless he has this chair."
