Ms Karen Feeney:

I have not forgotten the question about dual diagnosis.

This was a bottom-up initiative in Galway. The numbers began to creep up. Young people were presenting to emergency services and all the services decided to take action. It took one person to call the meeting to begin to explore the matter. It took a bit of time to discuss what would be the shape of this and whether we could find a building. Initially, we thought that we would make a CAS application but the local authority identified a group of apartments together.

The local authority renovated the apartments and, in turn, leased them to us. Section 10 provides initial staffing. There is also some funding from Tusla around that because a number of care placements break down when children reach 18 years of age.

As Galway Simon has evolved we have built a health and well-being team as part of our homeless services that are largely funded through social inclusion. We have an addiction counsellor on staff. We have had occupational therapy. There is a specialist service that tries to get people back to work and have social integration. Recently we have added a clinical psychologist to our team. There are now more options and ways to problem solve.

Dual diagnosis is still pretty weak and we do not have a highly evolved system. Addiction and mental health issues tend to be seen separately but we continue to advocate for dual diagnosis.