Dr. Susan Finnerty:

There are approximately 800 people in long-stay approved centres or continuing care. There are also roughly 2,100 in 24-hour supervised residences. As I said earlier, there is a real block at the moment because, first, there is no stock of housing to move people on even if they want to and are able to move on. That causes a backlog in the congregated settings. People in that figure of 800 who are in approved centres may be able to move on to high-support hostels as part of their care pathway. They cannot, however, because the hostels and residences are full because the people in them cannot move on and, therefore, not having adequate housing is a real block.

Second, I mentioned this many times but because there is no rehabilitation team, or if there is, it may be poorly staffed, it is difficult then to move people on where there is maybe some medium support or low support. People do not have the skills to move on. They are skills that could be learned and encouraged, however. Again, it is twofold. It is a lack of housing stock for people to move on and also lack of proper effective rehabilitation.