Mr. David Walsh:

At the heart of all the Deputy’s questions is the fact that the services as they exist are overwhelmed. She spoke about CDNTs and that they should be able to foresee families in crisis. Many CDNTs can see that but lack the capacity to intervene because they simply do not have the resources. We have about 700 vacancies across CDNTs, with the vast majority being professional vacancies. That really impacts on their capacity to manage the caseload of children in their areas. The disability roadmap is designed to help us build that capacity but we also need the disability action plan to be finalised and resourced in order to build up the level of service so we can meet all those needs.

Alongside that, we talk about the division of labour between CAMHS, primary care and disability services. It is fair to say that at this point, none of those services is resourced to the extent it would like to be in order to be able to provide the full range of services to the number of children who present. As we try to implement the national access policy, I am wary of introducing something else that just pushes children into a service that does not exist. We need to address deficiencies in primary care as well as dealing with both CAMHS and disability services.

I ask Dr. Burke to address the question on children with suicidal ideation and thresholds.