Mr. Eoin Barry:

One of the areas that CAMHS sees this arises is during the transition when young people are transitioning to adult mental health services. A concern that the vast majority of parents talk about is how involved will they be once they reach adult services. Often, that is a fear. However, the reality is that adult services involves and integrates families into the care of young adults. What we, as clinicians, are talking about is that this would be clarified in the eventual legislation. How would it operate? Really to emphasise the role of families so that working with families and young people to resolve it should really be a key part of this and would be best-evidence treatment. It will be a fear for parents and for young people. If somebody attending CAMHS is approaching their 16th birthday, there are issues involved. This is a scenario that is likely to arise.

We suggest that there is a role for a conversation between families and the young person, which happens anyway. To clarify, we emphasise the importance of families being the best advocates for young people in these situations.

In addition, as legislators, committee members have to consider the many young people who do not have family backgrounds and who are in care. There is also the issue of young people in direct provision centres etc. We emphasise the importance of advocacy services, especially for those young people who might not have advocates, to look for the service or to know what treatment young people are seeking. Those are the kinds of areas. There is the situation where a young person is in a family and is involving the family in that conversation, and the situation where young people, unfortunately, might not have the support of families and the need to make sure they have access to the correct advocacy service to address that.