Ms Angela O'Neill:

Assessment of need is my hobbyhorse. Assessment of need is a separate legislative process. The assessment is focused on determining whether the child or young person meets the definition of disability in the Act. It is around meeting what the Act requires us to do because when we do not tick all of the boxes in the Act, we end up with a court order telling us to do it again.

If I am a clinician working on a CDNT, I can work with a family very quickly to establish their immediate needs. In a five-minute conversation with a family, you can establish their priority is the kind of things Ms Canton spoke about, such as night sleep. The child will need speech and language therapy but right now, unless we address the sleeping, somebody will kill the child. We can assess the immediate needs and provide interventions very quickly without this big bells-and-whistles assessment to meet the legislative framework.

We are assessing all the time. Assessment is a dynamic process. When the assessment of need is done and legislative obligations are met, the speech and language therapist, social worker or whoever meets the family on a weekly, monthly or other basis is re-assessing the child and family’s needs all the time and deciding on the next steps. We need to separate meeting the legislative piece from doing what is right for families and supporting them in the right way. The Disability Act is making that difficult for us.