Ms Julie Ling:

Upskilling is something we take very seriously at LauraLynn. We have developed the education and training department and run courses for health care assistants, parents and health care professionals. We envisage that if we move into the community, the hospice at home model we will follow is one which is very well established in the United Kingdom. Sometimes parents just need to sleep for the night and their child may be stable with some needs. It would be possible for a health care assistant to provide such care. We are examining a model of having health care assistants and staff nurses whose work would be dictated by the child's needs rather than who was available. Recently we visited Scotland where there is in place a very interesting model of palliative care for children. There are two hospices, one in Glasgow and the other in Edinburgh, with outreach teams based in Inverness and Aberdeen. It is a very cohesive service which links together.

It is a new specialty. I have been in children's palliative care since 2002 and things have started to change so much. We all know each other. Collaborative working is the big issue we need to work on. As Dr. O'Reilly asked, are staff moving from one area to another? Children's palliative care means we can respond to that, and this is the way we can upskill our staff.

I should also mention there is a master's level module on children's palliative care at NUI Galway. This currently takes 24 people, which is the highest number of students this year on any of the postgraduate master's courses. The interest is there; again, it is about getting people funded. People are funding themselves, driving over to Galway to attend and so on. It is very hard for people to attend but they are making those efforts.

With regard to the national development committee, I am looking at the public gallery and I know the same faces appear on the committee for children's palliative care, including those of Ms Sinead Moran, Dr. Maeve O'Reilly, Ms Sharon Foley and myself. We work together in trying to push this agenda forward, but we need this committee's support. The main thing is that we do everything we can to try to get things moving. Our colleagues in the HSE have the willingness but just do not have the resources to be able to help us move things forward. That is the key point.