Professor Malcolm MacLachlan:

The referrals would trigger it. One of the reasons that trigger has not been working is there has been such a backlog of work for children's disability network teams in doing assessments. There is a huge backlog of assessments because they are extremely lengthy, so people do not get interventions. People who should be able to respond to referrals are not able to because there is a disproportionate demand on the time to do assessments. The assessments have to be done so that they can actually result in interventions rather than just having very nice detailed assessments. There has to be action coming from them. If we can establish that, which is the basis of the standard operating procedure, it will also free up a lot more clinical time so the integration with hospital-based services can be much more fluid.

It really requires a systemic approach. There are many moving pieces and the standard operating procedure is a key part to creating real connection between these different elements of the service.