Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank Ms Campbell and Ms Kinross. What we have been hearing is very positive. The notion I got from their opening statement and answers if that everything, from legislation to therapies, whether in or out of school and wherever else, is done on the basis of a feedback loop that is constantly checked, refined and so on. There is no perfect system. A system may make sense but that does not necessarily mean we will have always progressed with it since.

I like the idea of everything going through CAMHS. Some of my party colleagues spoke about the difficulties we have, siloed operations and so forth. Neurodevelopmental pathways are in line with the no-wrong-door policy, whether that is CAMHS or adult services. The witnesses spoke about universal or general services in the community. How does that happen if somebody does not fit the criteria but still needs a service? We are all fed up of dealing with people who have exited services, and that is while recognising that some of these services are doing an awful lot of good work but are under severe pressure.

There was a reference to a neurodevelopmentally informed workforce. That relates to training and places being created such that autistic people can participate in the workplace and be all they can be. It is that wider question of having assessment all the way through to the support aspect once there has been the correct diagnosis. As regards workforce planning, we hear that throughout the world, there are not enough speech and language therapists, occupational therapists and so on. Scotland also has this problem now. I think some of the issue relates to the siloed way we deal with this and to the fact we have not had a real conversation about what best practice assessment and therapies are and where they should be. That would take in the school aspect in particular, although I am not sure we have done that. Where does Scotland have difficulties and where has it found these specialists? We cannot magically create speech and language therapists and occupational therapists. I am not saying a teacher or a special needs assistant can fit the place but a lot of them will have seen best practice and implemented best practice and may have done a good deal of heavy lifting. I know this has happened in the case of my autistic son and probably saved us from needing other services we may not have got.

Where is Scotland with assistive technologies and follow-on therapies in general? In some cases, they involve training parents rather than dealing daily with kids, so certain technologies can facilitate the child, the parents, the teachers and whomever else, such as augmentative and alternative communication, AAC, and even the rapid prompting method, RPM. In the case of people who are non-verbal and for whom many of us would have considered there was no appropriate intervention, we have seen magical scenarios where people have been freed from what can only be described as a brutal jail.