Professor Malcolm MacLachlan:

I agree with everything the Minister of State said. Deputy Hourigan hit the nail on the head in that there is a great need not only for more training but also to train people in different ways. The Minister of State alluded to the importance of interdisciplinary training. Having been involved in training, I can advise the Deputy that, conventionally, people are trained in fairly narrow ways within their own disciplinary blinkers, so to speak. When they qualify, they have to learn how to work effectively with other disciplines. We need to adopt a radically new approach to the training of people. Such an approach would ensure that those training to be occupational therapists, speech and language therapists, psychologists or whatever would all train together from the get-go and when they graduate, they could hit the ground running and know how to interact with other people effectively. There may be opportunities for direct placements in the final parts of people’s training to support the children's disability network teams, CDNTs, more effectively.

The Minister of State mentioned the importance of people having a career path. Much work could be done in that area. One aspect of this approach is encouraging. Because we are offering people the opportunity to work in interdisciplinary teams, we will not have the situation we had some years ago where a person who graduated, say, as an occupational therapist might have worked alone and that could have continued for ten or 15 years. Now, people will be in a more supportive environment where they will be able to be more effective in delivering services. We want to strongly convey that disability is a great area in which to work. This is a very exciting time to come into it. Considerable investment is being put behind the whole ethos of the PDS and implementing the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, UNCRPD.