Dr. John Hillery:

Dr. Finnerty refers in her report to the fact that in the case of families who have a member with autism, a child who has issues might find it very hard to get an assessment done, and that is an issue about the different bodies that are meant to be responsible. I am aware that in my own county of Clare, there are difficulties in resourcing the autistic assessment process and people end up on a CAMHS waiting list. CAMHS has other things on it and may not see itself as the place for that, but also some of the CAMHS team - I know both from experience and from Dr. Finnerty's report - feel that they cannot deal with children with autism. Like the Senator, I cannot understand that, because they are often teams that assess people for autism but that is why we need standards and inspection of those standards. We have no national standards for how these teams work and what they should do. One could live in one county and get the assessment and one could live in another county and not. I say, "county". It is not necessarily counties, but it is also not necessarily CHOs because we know from Dr. Finnerty's report that within CHOs, there can be big differences in the service people feel they are getting from the teams. Once again, it is back to leadership and governance at a local level and having standards that people themselves can look to, to be fair, and then are answerable around.

I am sorry. That is a rather long answer and it does not actually answer the Senator's question because I do not have the answer.