Ms Lauren Keogh:

The first thing is having the ability to advocate. As a parent, it is a problem if one does not have that mental capacity or fight. It is important to have supports for parents so they can advocate, identify knowledge and educate.

Parents are very reasonable. They are very willing to get involved and safeguard their children but they need to know where to go to get the tools to access the support, to advocate and to identify their children's needs.

The second point is that there should not be two separate teams, a disability team and the mental health service team, working in two different ways. Patients are moved from one waiting list to another. We should not have had to go near the child and adolescent mental health service, CAMHS, if the disability team had the right resources and enough staff to read the reports, to give the matter enough attention and to listen to our concerns. It has a huge impact on a parent not to be listened to but to be seen as exaggerating. My child has high-functioning autism. She could come in here, sit and smile and look people in the eye and have a very normal conversation but outside she will have a full-blown meltdown. The staff do not see everything in a 40 minute meeting.

Siblings are completely forgotten about. It does not have to cost a fortune. The disability team could organise something as simple as peer support, a sibling group, for example, if CAMHS had one room free on a Wednesday morning every two weeks, or every month. Ms McGee mentioned that a coffee morning is coming up where she is based. That support for parents to connect and bounce ideas off one another would help. The treatment needs to be meaningful, not just ticking a box which is what is going on at the moment. Everyone is so concerned about getting on and ticking the box.