Dr. Susan Finnerty:

I have recovered, thank you. I might answer the question about doctors and how they feel about gaps in funding and treatment. I am a psychiatrist but like the Deputy I do not practise clinically and have not done so for some time. On gaps in funding and treatment, consultants have told me about the worries they have about how to provide a service for people when it is basically not there. An example of that might be to take somebody who has a severe and enduring mental illness, who is in a continuing care unit and who is capable of moving to more independent accommodation. There may be a small rehabilitation team who want that person to move on and who have provided the best they can but there is no housing for them to move into, no employment or vocational training for them to move on to and not enough support in the community for them to live a more independent lifestyle. That person stays where he or she is within the continuing care unit despite the fact that the doctors and the team feel that this person could move on. That person's life is affected by the fact that there are gaps in services and funding.

At the other end of the spectrum the same thing happens in CAMHS services as well. A person who may be assessed by a consultant or by one of the team may be unwell but there might not be any accessible beds in the system at that time for that young person to be admitted. That is where the Deputy's point about sleepless nights and worries comes into it because that young person may be unwell and, as was mentioned, the parents have to look after that child because there is no accessible place for that person to go. Yes, doctors worry, other team members worry and families worry about that.