Professor Jim Lucey:

The issue about recruitment is crucial. Many of the underperforming CAMHS areas are finding it difficult to recruit and may well rue the fact that the light has been shone on the poor services in the interests of the children. I am very hopeful, however. I want to share this because as a life-long educator in mental health, what the next generation of therapists, nurses, doctors and clinicians want is to work in healthcare and mental health care. The enthusiasm of the youth is huge. What happens, though, is that they are despondent when the culture of a certain centre becomes unsafe. When the access to education and training and the sense of safe practice diminishes they withdraw and then retention becomes very difficult. I have no doubt that if we all worked together, with Members of the Oireachtas, the media and the formers of the culture around mental health, we could change the culture of recruitment by giving people a sense of the international standard that attaches to the services themselves. This can only be done independently.