Dr. Amanda Burke:

Never ask a doctor what the ideal number would be. At the moment there are 716 clinical staff. We probably need about double that in community mental health teams. That is not to say we have not made progress. We are prioritising some posts over others to get services started. It will take at least five years. We are improving the pipeline, which is one of the main limiting factors in terms of training people for these specialised posts. There are particular areas that are difficult to recruit such as mental health and intellectual disabilities. Essentially, we have to get in at the training programmes and train enough psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers to do these posts. The current deficits relate mainly to qualified psychiatrists and health and social care professionals.