Ms Angela O'Neill:

As Professor MacLachlan said, we have had for a number of years an issue with resources being targeted almost exclusively towards very detailed assessments because of people being overcautious about the level of assessment required. That was causing huge problems for us in supporting children and families to access services and in being able to meet our legislative obligations under the Disability Act. That is why we introduced our standard operating procedure, SOP. Members familiar with the procedure will know it is a fairly thick document. It contains the standard operating procedure, which is the gospel, and a number of appendices. The SOP defines an assessment of need as a preliminary team assessment. Instead of the comprehensive assessment, it is an assessment that will determine whether or not a child meets the definition of disability in the Act and identify the child's needs as required by the Act. One of the appendices is a guidance for assessors. That guidance for clinicians gives a suggested timeframe for assessment and suggests the types of assessment tools they may use. It is, however, guidance, and it is up to each clinician to determine, based on his or her clinical expertise, what the individual child needs. It would be impossible for us to define what every child coming in will need in terms of the length of time and the assessment tools to be used because it varies based on their age, their presenting needs and so on. It is therefore a very general guidance and it is for each clinician to determine himself or herself what format that preliminary team assessment will take. What we are saying very clearly is that it is a preliminary screening. It is a once-off assessment rather than the 100-plus hours that were being devoted in some areas and the system getting totally clogged up.