Ms Martina Queally:

I will refer to some of what Dr. O'Donohue said. The way in which we organise the teams and how we do our business is important in terms of the child's needs being met at the most appropriate level. In response to Deputy Quaide, we discussed a stepped model of care in Sláintecare, which is about the child coming in and being seen at the most appropriate level. The real thrust of our efforts in establishing the regions is aligning our children's disability network teams, our CAMHS teams and our primary care teams to ensure that the child's needs are met as early as possible. In up to 26% of referrals, and higher in some CDNTs, the child was not appropriate for the specialist team when the assessments of need were looked at. This means that those children still have needs that have to be met in a timely manner. I would like to see a lot more collective working between primary care, disability and the mental health teams in order that they look to the populations they are serving in an integrated way.

There are 96 primary care teams in the country and 93 children's disability network teams. There is a requirement to align those teams in order that they have a focus on the populations they are serving. Equally, the CAMHS teams are geographically based. The main thing is that the child gets access on time and he or she is seen as quickly as possible by the right therapist. The CEO spoke of the integrated approach to referral and having a centralised referral system. That is critical in order to ensure that we completely understand our demand and our own activity so that we are optimising the staff effort and not going from one to the other.