Dr. Martin McMahon:

On the interventions to support people with an intellectual disability, a point was made about medication. People may present with behaviours that challenge or behaviours of concern. Much of the time, the interventions are longitudinal, with support from the therapists Professor McCarron spoke about. However, when services have a risk they are trying to manage, the use of medicine is innocent. They have the difficulty of trying to balance the health and welfare of the person with those of people providing support, knowing the intervention - for example long-term positive behavioural support, PBS - takes time and resources. Many times medicine and such interventions are used for a reason, for safety, and that creates lots of problems. We have retention and access issues, which augment these problems. That is why, as Professor McCarron described, the problems of psychotropic drug use and hyper-polypharmacy manifest on a practical level, when people are trying to support people with an intellectual disability because the interventions take time to have an impact. Within that, people are trying to manage risk and situations. It is a difficult situation for services to manage with the workforce. The Deputy hit the nail on the head. It is about projections and how many people there are with disabilities. On the front of an interesting report from the UK about children transitioning to adult services, one mother is reported as saying that she never thought her child would grow up. It says it is out of the pond into the sea. We have excellent data in IDS-TILDA. We know the problems and challenges and we should be able to address them.