Mr. Paul Longmore:

Some of the issues the Deputy mentioned, speak to the situations in which some people find themselves whereby the nature of their difficulties seems to exclude them from all services for some particular reason. Referrals end up going between services without any clear line of responsibility and any clear service offering support to that person.

I spoke earlier about service integration, which is often key in these situations. Mental health services and services generally are often presented with unique and complex situations which require some making sense of and understanding. If services can do this in a collaborative way and come together to discuss these things, they can decide which service or combination of services is the best fit for the difficulties that individual is experiencing.

Greater levels of communication and collaborative decision-making ensure that nobody is left without a service or to be bounced, in the context of referrals, as some people experience. As Martin Rogan stated earlier, it also allows for shared care where different services come together to offer a suite of supports that might meet different needs in a person's life or within a family.