Ms Martina Kelly:

In our case, most of the crises occurred on weekends and nights. The service should be like a hospital in that the personnel should be on call like nurses and doctors. We should have helpers available 24 hours per day, seven days per week. It is terrible that after 5 p.m. every day or on long bank holiday weekends, there is no one to help us bar the Garda. Its members are not trained for this, although they do their best, and we are very lucky with our local gardaí. I give them great praise for the help they have given to my family. It is not fair that gardaí are called into these cases. One evening we were desperate, but as we are from a rural area, the local gardaí were not working and town gardaí who did not know us were called in. A big van arrived with six gardaí with flak jackets jumped out. One would have thought there was a hostage situation because our son was having a meltdown and had taken every tablet from our medicine cabinet. They were non-prescription drugs but they were Anadin and Panadol, for example. He swallowed the lot and we did not know who to call. I thought we would get the local gardaí but the call went straight to the town gardaí. Six of them arrived and jumped out, ready to attack. One might have thought there had been an assault at our home. I had to run out and stop them as the issue would have escalated. I did not know any of the six gardaí but I asked whoever was the calmest and best mediator to come in and speak to our son. The other five stayed outside and did not know what to expect. Within five minutes the entire issue was defused. Instead of calling the ambulance, they brought him to hospital. Things can get out of control very quickly and some people just do not know how to handle such cases. None of us does, and if it is the first time for any of us, we are not trained and do not know what to do. We need weekend and night help.

I only heard recently that CAMHS is only working on 53% of the staff recommended ten years ago by A Vision for Change. If any company was working with 53% of required staff, no one would manage or run a business. We are dealing with lives and mental health. These young people are our future and we need full staffing for services. No one can work with 53% of staff. We definitely need more help in the community in order that there is not the same stigma with mental health. Our teachers were a great help and spotted problems, but teachers are not trained to deal with mental health issues. They should be given more training to deal with basic mental health issues to help children and us. It is about losing the stigma of mental health. No one else is stigmatised because they have cancer or anything else. No one should be stigmatised because of mental health issues either.