Ms Niamh Randall:

Access to affordable housing underpins all we are saying. Not having it inhibits recovery, not just for prisoners but for people who have experienced mental health or drug and alcohol issues. We also stress the necessity of responding to complex needs. If one is female, a drug user, has mental health issues and is in prison the challenge is how to respond effectively to address all those issues at the same time. We often hear calls to deal with them one at a time but that is not how it works - we need to deal with all of them at the same time. The inter-agency and interdepartmental approach is what succeeds and the only way to make a plan work is to have everybody on board and fully committed to responding in the best way possible for a particular individual.

The importance of income supports cannot be overstated, in the form of rent supplement and HAP payments for those seeking access to housing but also for people who are living independently in the community. It is also important to have gender-specific responses, particularly in the way of trauma-informed care. My colleagues will talk about how discharge protocols work in reality. Ensuring a system is in place and that there are back-up supports are a key part of planning for a person's release.

We probably cannot ensure access to people in prisons but we could give confidential access to people in our services who have had experience of all these issues to discuss how difficult it was to navigate them. Even talking about this can be really difficult and it must be difficult when one is trying to navigate housing issues as well as a drug and alcohol issue. If there is an interest, we would be very happy to support this and we will see what we can do.