Ms Hannah N? Ghiolla Mhairt?n:

No. I think that at the moment as part of the pilot the CAMHS hubs might be offering beyond service hours, but most of our children are not within the CAMHS hub. It is only a pilot within a certain number of small areas. The rest of our children are dependent on the 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. service. It is so soon after Christmas. A lot of our members needed support over Christmas, which is always a bad time for mental health. CAMHS offices were closed for two or three weeks, so we had a lot of members ending up in accident and emergency over Christmas because they could not get help elsewhere. Similarly, if there is a bank holiday or it just happens to be the day your consultant is on annual leave you cannot access any help and if you go into accident and emergency you will usually just be discharged to CAMHS, so you are kind of doing a circular loop, but when you are in that crisis, accident and emergency is often the only option.