Ms Donna Leavy:

There is no denying that this is an emotional topic for us all to talk about. I have two autistic boys. The first boy was diagnosed in 2019. Luckily enough, this was under the early intervention team because in my experience the amalgamation of the early intervention and school-age teams in the CDNTs has not been a favourable transition. When my child was discharged from the early intervention team when he turned five, we were told he would have a two-year wait to access services in the school-age team. The situation has only deteriorated since then.

These therapies are as vital to our children as life support is in ICU. Our services and the access our children have to them should be protected, and while I hope there will not be another pandemic like Covid, we should not be in a position as parents such as during the restrictions when our speech and language therapists were swabbing our children at Covid centres. We need protection of these services for our children.

Moreover, our children need to be looked at holistically. We need to look at them in our own environment and services need to be provided to them in schools and in their homes, where there is a true representation of the child and the child as a whole is considered in the context of how they learn and adapt to circumstances.

I echo what every other parent has had to say. We hope to see progress and change for our children.