Ms Áine Lawlor:

I might start with the Senator's assessment of need piece. Currently, we have a bottleneck in the system. We have not matched funding and resourcing with the needs of children who need to be assessed. We advocate, and I think that is in our statement and is certainly shared by a lot of our health profession colleagues, that children should get an assessment when they need it. Creating a system that assesses children just at set times continues to create bottlenecks for children. There needs to be access to assessment in a timely manner, perhaps at their transition to or when things become difficult in school, and certainly earlier access to assessments.

There is a continued issue for families and clinicians on the ground trying to navigate long waiting lists, access to services and trying to utilise assessment of need to do that. In many areas, this has become a way to at least identify their need and that they are there in the system. That continues to apply but we do not have a matching resource for it, which continues to be a problem. While we have reduced and removed many diagnostic barriers to access it, because people are on a waiting list and cannot get access to a speech therapist, an occupational therapist, a psychologist or a diagnosis to identify their needs, they are going to use assessment of need to do that because of these vast waiting lists and the inability of access. This is not only their assessment but also the consequent intervention the child should have access to.

It is a continued problem that is only increasing and will do so until we can manage waiting lists to intervention. That requires resourcing and ties into the Senator's question on therapists within the CRC. We continue to see an issue with access to health and social care professionals. It is not the sole issue. There is a retention issue, but also a significant barrier to recruitment that has been the implementation of a pay and numbers strategy which has significantly impacted employment, certainly in primary care and CDNTs. A significant timeline to get a therapist in post is also what we see and hear from our members all the time.