Ms Linda Kelly:

One other important point is that it depends on what school is looking at the system. The child protection designated persons, CPDPs, cannot be overlooked because you are bringing people in to work with children who have complex needs in some cases and less complex needs in others. There is a fear factor on behalf of people around some of that.

There is a set-up that is not well established in Ireland but is in other jurisdictions, although it is emerging in the health service. These workers do not even have a grade code, so that will tell you how emergent it is. There are speech and language therapy assistants, physiotherapy assistants and occupational therapy assistants. This comes back to the lack of workforce planning and a chief HSCP office. In other health systems and in other jurisdictions that sort of support system is much better established than it is here. What happens here is that they exist in pockets around the country and they do not even have their own grade code, so we do not even know how many of them there are globally in the health service system. There are some synergies between health and education that could be leveraged if there was leadership in both sections, and the committee has heard from this side of the table that there is a deficit on that side at Government level. Because of that we are not even in the space where you are able to talk about effective synergies and collaborations that, from a family perspective, would make the biggest difference and impact. As was rightly said, we all have a role to play in how we look at that.

I want to come back in on the Chairman's comment on complaints because it was an interesting one. We have seen that because the complaints process in health is so ineffective, our children's disability network team managers are highlighting to us that there is an increase in the number of inquiries and complaints into the service, almost going into the thousands. If that is what you are spending your time doing, how are you planning for and providing services? Because parents and families rightly have complaints about the quantum of service or access to same, they are submitting those complaints across a range of forums in order to get any sort of response from the HSE centrally. For clinicians, that often means complaints are going into their regulator. HSCPs are regulated by CORU in the same way that teachers are regulated by the Teaching Council and so front-line clinicians feel vulnerable to facing fitness to practice complaints, not because of anything to do with their professional practice or their competence but because of systemic failures on the HSE side around the provision and quantum of service.

We represent people in that process and we can see it. The Chairman's point is well made that a complaints system that is effective is required.