Dr. Carmel Corrigan:

If I may, I would like to add a small point in relation to CAMHS. We consulted with 5,500 children for the UN committee's report. We had children responding to surveys, obviously with their parents filling in some of them, from the ages of two to 17. We then engaged with over 200 children directly in order to flesh out some of the themes. The one recurring theme through all of the surveys and the report was the issue of mental health and children's concern about the lack of services and the lack of availability of support and information, either when they are in poor mental health or to prevent poor mental health. As a follow-up, we did a second piece of research at the end of last year. I do not know if Deputy Buckley has seen this. It is called A Piece of my Mind. It was a survey responded to by over 2,000 children in secondary schools between the ages of 12 and 17. It specifically looks at their own mental health, how they assess it and what they feel contributes to poor mental health. The survey also asked about CAMHS and other services. The same issues come up again and again. They know them. The issues are that they wait a long time for a service; they cannot access a service; the service does not last long enough to address their issues; they feel that it is unhelpful; they are not really listened to; or the service does not deal with or address their specific issues them. What they want is services in school. We keep coming back to this all of the time. Children know where they are and where they are comfortable. They know a career guidance counsellor is not a psychologist or a trained therapist. They do not want to go to the school chaplain when they are feeling unwell. They know that they need those services where they are, which is in schools. We really welcome what is a large step forward with the primary school pilot programme being pushed out on this but in the context of future proofing, we need to flag that those children will move from primary school to secondary school in exactly the same way as a child with a disability will move from primary to secondary school. If those services end in sixth class and there is no support for them in secondary school then we cannot expect the picture of our children's mental health to change for the better in the long term.