Professor Malcolm MacLachlan:

I will respond to the Deputy's concern that nobody is listening. This really concerns me because as Ms Canton has explained, a lot of work has been done establishing family forums that were explicitly established to hear the service user's voice. I spoke recently to a CDNT manager who had been to the first family forum, which was a very tough meeting for her because there was a lot of criticism. She told me that when she went into work the next morning, she had a load of emails and texts from people saying they were very satisfied with the service they were receiving but did not feel they could speak up at that meeting because a lot of people were hurting a lot because they were not getting that service. That forum is there to share with the families the challenges of the service and to give them an input into helping us prioritise where resources should go.

I will revisit a comment made by Deputy Tully. I think she suggested that if we know that someone has Down's syndrome, we know what he or she needs. I am sorry to say that this is definitely not the case.