It is almost inconceivable that the horrendous story of how the State mistreated a little boy with scoliosis could get any worse, but it has. Harvey Sherratt’s family were forced to watch him suffer as the healthcare system failed their little boy again and again, and still new details emerge revealing just how egregious that failure was.
To watch your beloved child suffer and struggle while you fight and beg the system to help him is in itself a form of suffering that no parent should endure. Now, even after their terrible loss, the suffering of Harvey’s parents continues with every new and shocking revelation about how their son was failed.
Yesterday, the Sunday Times reported on a whistleblower’s disclosure that Children’s Health Ireland (CHI) – the statutory body providing health services for children and young people across Ireland – misclassified Harvey, who had scoliosis and spina bifida, as a palliative patient, resulting in his removal from the active scoliosis surgery waiting list at Temple Street Children’s Hospital despite recommendations from three surgeons that Harvey should have surgery to implant growth rods in his spine.
We know what Gillian Sherratt and Stephen Morrison believe the removal of Harvey from the active waiting list, in addition to the general inexplicable delay, meant for their young son. During the long wait for spinal surgery, the curve in his spine went from 75 degrees to 130 degrees, and by the time Harvey received spinal surgery last December, it had reached the point where it could not be fully corrected. Harvey died on July 29th of this year.
His distressed parents said that the curve caused his rib cage to twist around his lungs and heart, severely restricting his breathing. “We had to watch him deteriorate, cry in pain, struggle to breathe and lose the sparkle in his eye over those 33 months,” Gillian Sherratt told a rally in the summer.
“Most importantly though, it robbed him of his childhood, it robbed him of his comfort, it robbed him of his quality of life, and it robbed us of the opportunity to make precious family memories with him… that to us, is something we will never get over.”
Harvey’s parents have long fought for answers as to why their son was removed from the surgical waiting list. “It’s been fifteen months since I found out that Harvey was removed from the list, and it is just getting worse,” Gillian Sherratt said yesterday. “We still have no clarity or any accountability as to what led to that.”
Ms Sherratt pointed out that “even if Harvey was palliative, which I can say 100% he was not, why is that not in his medical records, why was he not linked to a palliative care team”.
“It makes no sense,” she added. “Harvey wasn’t even on prescription pain relief, which you’d think would be the very least a child receiving palliative care would be getting”. She said her son’s medical team “not once” mentioned that he was classified as needing palliative care. She said: “I think we would remember that discussion”.
Of course they would. Palliative care is wonderful, working to alleviate pain and distress and improving quality of life, but any parent fighting for their child to get surgery would recognise that a palliative care path might signal that the medical team were not considering surgery.
The whistle-blower, who works in CHI says that Harvey was examined by a consultant surgeon based in Great Ormond Street Hospital in May 2024, who said that the little boy was “suitable for surgery once bone density is improved” – yet CHI management were told that the consultant had in fact “agreed with the CHI opinion” that Harvey was “not fit or ready for surgery”.
How can these appalling and inexplicable errors continue to happen, and how can so many children like Harvey still be struggling and suffering a full eight years after then Minister for Health Simon Harris that no child would wait longer than four months for scoliosis surgery. The failure to keep that political promise has led to immeasurable heartbreak. It should be utterly unacceptable.
Yesterday, Gillian Sherratt posted a searing message on social media outlining the never-ending battle that her family was forced to take on to get care for Harvey. It’s an insight into what so many exhausted parents of children with disabilities have to take on: an interminable, stressful, distressing fight just to have basic life-preserving care for your child. It’s a disgrace, a stain on our state and our claim to cherish our children.
She shows that the fight for Harvey began “at 12 weeks pregnant when we got the diagnosis”, and continued “at 36 weeks pregnant when they suggested withdrawing medical care at birth.”
I know from speaking to parents that when a medical team doesn’t want to provide medical care for a child after birth, parents are then forced to take on a desperate fight where they can feel they are up against the whole system. The question as to whether a culture has arisen in the health service which undervalues children with disabilities, particularly when diagnosed before birth, may be worth examining.
Ms Sherratt explains that they had to fight for 5 years to get Harvey a speech device so he could communicate, and had to fight again to get a child with scoliosis and spina bifida a wheelchair. That is a broken system. It cannot continue.
Peadar Tóibín asked yesterday: “How could such catastrophic mistake be made? How could governance of CHI be so broken as to lead to this disastrous outcome?”
“When did the Tánaiste Simon Harris know? When did the Minister for Health know?” he asked. “Did the Tánaiste and the Minister for Health know what happened to Harvey when they met with Gillian and Stephen, Harvey’s parents, recently in government buildings. If so, why did they not tell Harvey’s parents as to what had happened? Was the assigning of Harvey to a palliative list an accidental decision?”
“These are desperately serious questions that CHI, the Tánaiste and the Minister for Health have a responsibility to answer immediately. Aontú is calling for CHI to be brought before the Health Committee this week and for the Tánaiste and the Minister for Heath to provide time on the floor of the Dáil for questions in this life and death issue,” he said.
Harvey’s parents and the other families devastated by the scoliosis sandals are long overdue the inquiry they seek. This government, and the unmitigated disaster that has been the CHI’s handling of children with scoliosis, brings shame on us all.