Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for being before us today. For me the key phrase around CAMHS is always "getting into CAMHS". There is this constant battle of getting into CAMHS. In advocating for families or for people who need access to services, I characterise CAMHS as like a silo with no windows and no door. Whatever the governance structures are or how it operates, my perception of how it operates is very much within this. It seems to exclude more people than it lets in. That has been my first-hand experience as a typical constituency TD, and that is what we all are here effectively. I am a great believer in breaking down silos, in seeing cross-collateralisation from the community and from the lived experience of people such as Neil right up to psychiatrists, psychologists and everybody else who needs to work within the system, and of building out an infrastructure that ensures that where a person has a need, there is a door through which they can go. In saying this, I am not saying anything that has not already been said.

I want to try to get a deeper understanding of the substance abuse service specific to youth, SASSY, and the youth and drug alcohol service, YoDA. I am reliably informed by my Dublin colleague that YoDA is on the southside and SASSY is on the northside. We are going through a bit of a "Star Wars" phase at home at the moment and I am reliving past glories. I have to say I am thoroughly enjoying it. It seems to me there is something inherent within that SASSY and YoDA model. I say this because at the moment I have a situation of a young person presenting with a dual diagnosis that is not related to addiction - I will not say too much more beyond that it is not addiction related - and we are trying to get that poor kid into CAMHS. He has been excluded just for want of some sort of an assessment so that his mother, in this instance, can take the next step on his behalf. We are banging our heads off the wall. This is us as TDs doing it. It is really internalising what his mother is going through on behalf of her own son. I am fearful for the woman at this stage because it is a traumatic experience for her.

Have we arrived at this situation because of these silos? Is it because certain types of professions are protecting how they operate and not wanting necessarily to collaborate? Is it as simple as saying there are not enough front-line people in the system for the it to work? Perhaps the witnesses could tell me because it seems the SASSY and YoDA models are a good starting point, and Deputy Costello also spoke about the hub and spoke model. There is something in these. If we could roll that out, even in spite of the shortages of front-line staff, it has been my experience that people will travel to access services if they are not immediately available within their own geographical location. They are desperate to get access to services. If, at the next meeting, we are going to push back against Mr. Gloster on this one, is the right question to ask when a YoDA and a SASSY model are going to be rolled out throughout the country? Will the response to that be that we have the community network teams, we have CAMHS, we have the progressing disability services, and we have pathways to this and pathways to that?

I am genuinely not being cynical because we always work to try find solutions. Forgive me if I am being long winded. In my experience the HSE is excellent at processes and it is excellent at devising strategies. It is absolutely brilliant at answering parliamentary questions. I can give the committee chapter and verse on how many children and young people are waiting for access to CAMHS because I have a list as long as my arm of replies to parliamentary questions. Until we get to the point where the HSE is strategically solving the issues and giving attention to the SASSYs and the YoDAs of this world, where it is addressing everything in the mental health reform and is giving due recognition to people like Neil, then we will be having this conversation again in five years' time. Can I get the witnesses' real and raw perspectives on this? It would help me in the next step of this process here in committee.