Ms Anne O'Connor:

There are a few things we are looking at.

We are challenged on the emergency front. That may be what the Deputy was referring to. On decongregation, we have moved 160 people this year and we will continue to decongregate.

Where we have an urgent need for a placement, depending on the needs of the individual, we are challenged on two fronts. The first is that the cost of placements can be extremely high for individuals. The second is we cannot always get them. Often we have a variety of providers who assess people and we make arrangements and they fall through. That is particularly prevalent in certain parts of the country.

We have an extensive piece of work looking at all of our placements at present because in reality we should get away from emergencies. We should not be dealing with emergency placements - that is the language we use. By building in earlier intervention with families and by building in respite care, which we discussed earlier, we can reduce the emergency nature of placements. On the work we are doing, we are looking to see how we can work better with providers to prepare for people who have more complex needs because that is where we become particularly challenged.