Ms Sarah Hughes:

I largely agree with the points made. When we move away from focusing on a crisis model of care, we get to a point where we have fewer people in crisis.

We currently see that people joining the waiting list when they are in crisis are waiting months or years and getting more into crisis. It is more difficult to treat people when problems become much more entrenched. On the crisis side, there are a couple of specialist areas that need further investment and development, such as dual diagnosis and eating disorders, especially inpatient facilities for eating disorder patients and, in particular, those who require medical intervention and mental health intervention at the same time. There are a couple of areas like that which would benefit from further funding.