Ms Rachel Cassen:

In terms of the transition from school, it is very important to say that Leap Ireland works with families with children with intellectual disabilities and-or autism. The personal budget and the personal assistance model are different. This is a simplification but the personal assistance model, as I understand it, supports more individuals with physical disabilities who are able to self-direct. Individuals with intellectual disability and-or autism who are eligible for disability support services may not be - yet anyway - in a position to self-direct their own funding and supports. The role of the family or other allies around the person is very important. In other countries where personal budgets are available, unless the person, with the support of their family, is able to develop a vision of an ordinary life with valued roles, they will simply use their money in an individualised way to buy back traditional services. That is a waste of time. That is not the outcome we are looking for. We are looking for people's lives to look similar to the lives of their brothers and sisters. How do we do that? We use the money to support them to move out into the ordinary community to live what we call, sometimes, a good life.

Trained supporters who understand and are led by the vision of the person are needed. Who provides that work? This is where we talk about the landscape of community supports, including DPOs and family-led organisations like ourselves, which employ people in roles, such as inclusion facilitators, to work with the person to embed them into ordinary community life. That is not a quick fix; it is long work. It is a very different way from the way, for example, employability currently works. Providing support to get a person into college, to see they are integrated into college, providing support to find somebody a suitable job, supporting them in that job and fading those supports over time, have proved very successful in other jurisdictions.

We need to get away from spending the budget just on clinical supports. After people get to adulthood, they have probably had a lot of the benefit they are going to have from clinical interventions. What else is needed? We are looking at using the funding to support them into valued roles in the community.