Pauline Tully (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Going back to the school issue that Deputy Coveney raised, there is a situation in Cavan where there is a special school that accepts students from Cavan and Monaghan. There was an OT coming in from one of the CDNTs and that OT was only allowed to deal with the students from that particular county. The school talked about the benefits of hiring an OT itself, which the board did a few years ago for a period of time, and the tremendous work that OT was able to do with the children, and with the staff, teachers and SNAs observing, they too were able to use those coping mechanisms. The school inclusion model is an excellent one that should be held up as an example. I think it was piloted in CHO 7. Consideration should be given to the roll-out of the model, as was supposed to happen. Perhaps the Minister of State will indicate whether it was rolled out.

I was told by the NCSE that where that model existed, the demands on the CDNT in the community reduced dramatically. We need to take a helicopter view. It has to be child-centred, where there are supports for the child in the school and in the community rather than services operating in silos. There is currently education, the CDNTs, primary care and CAMHS and they are all working against one other. I was talking to a mother today whose child was referred to CAMHS for an ADHD assessment. CAMHS then referred him back to the CDNT because it said he needs OT and speech and language therapy. If he needs everything, he should get everything. If he needs the assessment and he needs the supports he should be getting them all. I do not see why it has to be one or the other. I talked to somebody within the HSE about this and was told they do not talk to one other. That is the main issue here. We need to get these people talking to one other because it should be about the child rather than about the particular team and where the funding is coming from. It is all Government funding. Could we see a more co-operative approach and more working together between all of the teams? Is there a mechanism to do that? The Minister of State indicated that an independent review of the CDNT service model is being carried out at the moment by the NDA. Is there a timeline for that? Is that going to be part of the focus of the review? Will it focus on how the different parts, such as CAMHS, primary care, etc., can work better together?