Ms Anne O'Connor:

The Deputy is referring to children's disability services, which have a high level of demand. The roll-out of children's disability networks has not all been smooth. It is a change to how we do our business. There is no doubt about that. Enhanced community care has had the highest allocation of resources, with about 495 posts in that CHO to support some initiatives that we are talking about here, which is higher than anywhere else. We know that there are people who are concerned about how the community networks are being developed. It is a change in how we do our business. In order to meet the needs of as many children as possible and to do it properly, this is absolutely the right way to go. We will continue to communicate at a local level. We have now commenced all networks. It took us longer than envisaged because of Covid and some other reasons, but we now have all children's disability networks in place across the country, and, likewise, we are developing the enhanced community care networks and have 51 of those in place. They will work together to meet the needs of local populations.

The Deputy referred to the reach into the services. Having these networks in place provides a structure that allows us to work with people in their local areas to try to address their local needs, instead of looking at everything through either a bigger regional or national lens. Ultimately, it is about the people working in those areas. There is no doubt that we have a challenge with recruitment to secure sufficient health and social care professionals for those disability teams to be able to deliver all the services that we want to. We remain committed to that and continue to support all the CHOs in their recruitment to continue to drive the implementation of the networks, which are now all in place.