Professor Matthew Sadlier:

There is a huge issue with emergency department care for children in this country. We have two non-adherent policies. This is a policy problem that should be solved, where our paediatric hospitals have a ceiling where they define a child as being under 16, while our mental health services define a child as somebody under 18. I apologise for having to discuss this today. If somebody in that gap between the two has an episode of something like self-harm, where they need a medical intervention, they go to an adult emergency department because paediatric emergency departments will not see them over the age of 16. They need a mental health assessment in an adult emergency department, but there is no child and adolescent psychiatry provided to adult emergency departments. They then get seen by adult psychiatry, which leads to that line of potentially being involved in adult admissions, etc. This is a policy problem that needs to be aligned. Either a child is someone under 16 or not. We brought this up at our AGM with the Ombudsman, who said that paediatric hospitals should be treating patients up to the age of 18, but we are about to open a big national hospital that will not see anybody over the age of 16. This is a problem with the unalignment of mental and physical health age. That needs to be clarified to help to deal with this problem.