Dr. Cathal Morgan:

We indicated at the outset that this standard operating procedure does not solve the problem. We made very clear that there has been very little to no investment in children's services over recent years. The National Disability Authority has told us there is evidence to suggest we will need upwards of 400 therapy grade posts in the children's disability services. There is no doubt that investment is absolutely required. Investment with structures and pathways identified for everyone, most particularly for parents, needs to happen. This can be done by the reconfiguration of our existing disability services under what is called progressing disability services so that each community health organisation has a range of approximately 96 networks made up of individual teams with all those disciplines working on those teams, dealing with and providing services to children who have complex disability needs. We feel we have come a fair distance, have had some positive results recently and have agreement with our colleagues in the section 38 and 39 services because many of the therapy services are delivered through that channel. In order to manage that we have agreement on putting a management post in place to make sure there is better and more effective utilisation of those posts. At present, therapists work for the organisations that employ them in that capacity. That is not to say they want to do that. Everyone has agreed that we need better co-ordination between services. In other words, better management of services.

Resources for access are required in children's disability services. Everyone says the same thing. When that is done, the pathway will be very clear to parents, clinicians and practitioners and we will be confident in saying that. There are concerns about the time range for doing an assessment. This is formally part of a consultation with Fórsa. I agreed with Deputy Donnelly that I will meet the representative bodies again to have a session with them on their concerns about this. That commitment has been made.

Sometimes to do a full diagnosis of certain disorders, for example, ASD, requires quite a long time. It needs to be done carefully because the last thing one wants is to apply a tag or diagnosis that does not fit because that person becomes tagged with that for ever.