Ms Angela O'Neill:

I thank the Chairman. To give the Deputy an overview of the concept of the preliminary team assessment, as Dr. Morgan stated, the Disability Act provides significant detail in terms of timeframes for assessment. The associated regulations contain quite comprehensive detail in terms of our legal obligations. What the Disability Act did not do is it did not define what an assessment of need should look like. As members will be aware, what the Disability Act confers on people is an entitlement to have an assessment of need. There is no associated entitlement to intervention. What has evolved in recent years is that the focus has become exclusively on assessment and children are waiting very significant periods. As the Deputy stated, some children wait several years for an assessment of need and then find that they go onto another very lengthy waiting list for intervention. I can think of an example of a little boy of 18 months who was referred for an assessment of need in the context of a diagnostic autism spectrum disorder, ASD, assessment. As he was waiting for a diagnostic ASD assessment, he was not able to access other services.

When he got his diagnostic assessment three years later, it was found that he did not have ASD. That child therefore missed out on accessing any interventions in that three-year period.

We want to ensure with the standard operating procedure that children get a streamlined assessment within the timelines of the Disability Act 2005 and then go on to an intervention pathway immediately. A little child like the one to whom I referred would have been seen and had his assessment commenced within three months, completed within another three months and he would have been on an intervention pathway on which the ASD diagnostic assessment would have evolved over time. He would have had a period of diagnostic intervention rather than losing a three-year period while he was on a waiting list. Our goal with this new procedure is to ensure that children are seen for a quick assessment but are also placed on an intervention pathway as quickly as possible.