Mr. Bernard O'Regan:

I will address some of the points. Communication is a high priority for us and I understand the effect even of the way letters are worded, the type of language used and the timeframes in them. That meets a legal requirement on one side but there is also the question of the experience for families. It can be very upsetting, particularly for the families at an early point in engaging with the health and social care service. It is not the starting point they should have in engaging with services. We want to be able to look at that and we have prioritised it as part of how we are looking at communications overall.

The Acting Chairman made a point about how we are conveying and explaining what the service ambition is and what we are working towards. We are working on that. We will not be in a position to facilitate the types of visit that she and her colleague had last week. Although we can facilitate it for some people, we need to be able to ensure families have a good sense of what the service will be and what the vision is. We are working on that.

There are a couple of points relating to recruitment. Ms O'Connor and Mr. Reid spoke about some of the steps being worked on in looking at recruitment. One element is consideration of how we are describing the service that people would come into so that working in children's disability services and being part of the children's disability network team could be seen as an employment prospect that is appealing, exciting and something of which people want to be a part. When they have choices about where to work - whether it is primary care, the child and adolescent mental health services, older person services or children's disability services - we should be able to describe the service as something that jumps out at prospective employees as being a good place to work and a good service with which to be involved. It should be seen as a place they can bring their skills to fruition and make a real contribution to the lives of children and families. This is in addition to the recruitment strategies we are running, looking at opportunities around assistant grade staff and others who may also be able to play a role.