Mr. Liam Woods:

The resources that go in are a recurring requirement where they are working, so they are invested in for the medium term. In terms of roll-out and expansion, the last two to three years have seen quite significant growth in community intervention teams, pathfinder and other initiatives. Community paramedics, which the Chair mentioned, have a lot of capacity based on a review of what has happened in the north east of the country. Sometimes that presents us with regulatory issues. We may need to look at the role of practitioners in the community single-handed and that is happening alongside the potential expansion of community paramedics.

"Pilot" is a dangerous word in our environment. "First instance" or "pioneering initiative" is better because pilots can crash and burn. The Chair may be obliquely referring to that. Where we see it working, we need to amplify it as quickly as we can. Often local leadership, both clinical and managerial, is pushing these and they are promoted and driven in that way. We evaluate and look across when we do our service plan to any area or areas where we can grow and encourage more. The limiting factors are that many of these are therapy and clinical grades of staff and we have to recruit in to them, so that takes a bit of time, and having available resources. We have significant resource to expand this year.