Dr. Orla Walsh:

Senator Black is absolutely 100% correct. Children living with obesity and being overweight are stigmatised and they have much higher rates of mental illness and ill health, as do their families, on a daily basis. I have the pleasure of working with a multidisciplinary team and we have an interest in and training for caring for these children, adolescents and their families. The problem is that we only see the tip of the iceberg. The criteria to come into our service is that the person is in the significantly higher percentile for BMI and already has two health comorbidities as a result. It is the children who do not meet our criteria who are at a loss for services at the moment. We do have a model of care that outlines how these children can be provided for at the different levels. We need commitment to get that model funded and operationalised for all children living with obesity. The service is only currently in Dublin. We have children travelling from Letterkenny and from Cork, for example, to access this service so we need to make it available to all children and adolescents throughout Ireland and at every population level.

We also need to work on pathways of services working with our colleagues in child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS, because people need to be able to access obesity care wherever they are. The other important role is in working with our colleagues in the community disability network teams, CDNTs, to work with CAMHS to educate and upskill the staff that are there to have pathways between our service and their service for these children.