Ms Anne O'Connor:

As part of our improvement programme for our acute hospitals, members of our special delivery unit audit those hospitals. The issues that arise in EDs are often symptomatic of challenges across the entire site. It is important for us to look at the totality of the beds. They go into a hospital on a given day and audit everybody in a bed to see who is in the bed and whether they should be there or if they should be somewhere else. That work goes on all the time. They have been focusing on our most challenged sites recently to ensure the best use is made of all the available beds. I assure members of the committee that that improvement work is constantly ongoing.

I might say a word about mental health and children. We currently have 71 community teams and we have beds. Interestingly, we hear much about people awaiting mental health beds. At any one time at the moment we might only have one or two people on a waiting list for an acute mental health bed. Our challenge relates more to the different needs of different groups of children. Deputy Durkan mentioned autism. Where we have children with different types of needs, they are not necessarily appropriate for acute mental health beds. We are developing an approach focused on in-home intensive support and in-home intensive respite. That will come with a range of behavioural supports so that children can stay at home and be fully supported with behavioural and other supports. That will be growing again in 2020. We are trying to differentiate between children who have different needs and to ensure we are providing the right supports in the right place for them.