Mr. Conor Boksberger:

It is such a valuable piece. It is not something we have huge metrics for. It is an often underappreciated piece of work that happens at the fringe of our core business but it is so important. Having been on the other end of the phone with countless parents over the last nine years in Jigsaw, I know that a person does not have to know anything about mental health services until the moment their child is in crisis or in distress. At that point, everyone is frightened and scared and nobody knows where to turn. They know about CAMHS services because everyone has heard enough about them but people do not know where else to go. We often meet parents at that point. As Dr. Duffy mentioned, that is when Jigsaw redirects parents to clinicians who have the expertise around different types and levels of support, such as community-based care, or primary, secondary or tertiary levels of care. We can work with the parent, firstly to help to bring them down so they can be an effective resource for the young person in that moment, and secondly to help them to know where to go and how to navigate the system. Jigsaw can send a letter to their GP outlining what they have said in a language that can communicate with more medicalised services. We can help the parent to know where they can go to get other types of support in their community. It is happening on the fringes. It would be great to see something more robust and centralised so that there is a place where every parent and young person knows they can go as a first point of call and then be redirected out. It should not just be about CAMHS or Jigsaw - a range of different supports should be tailored to the needs of the young person in that moment. A front door is needed before we can consider what is in the rest of the house. People need to know where to go first.