Ms Paula Dalton:

I am in the CHO 5 area. I thank the committee for giving me the opportunity to speak about my son Rhys who is 13 years old. I will hold up his photograph to the members.

Rhys was born at 34 weeks gestation. He was very small and had to fight a great deal harder than other children to get home from hospital. I never felt such joy as on the day I held my beautiful little boy in my arms. Rhys was diagnosed with high functioning autism when he was four years old. Even with this diagnosis, my son was a very happy, sociable little boy with family and close friends. Rhys was always a happy, energetic child who had a great love of learning about animals and different countries and their cultures. He taught himself basic French in a weekend when he was six years of age. He was extremely intelligent. He loves to go out with his friends and to have pizza at a youth club. He wants to be a boy who can do everything his friends can do.

In 2012, my son first showed signs of self-harming. He tried to cut himself with a butter knife. He also tried to stop eating. When asked why his reply was, "So I can die". My son was eight years old and he wanted to die. He said, "I want to close my eyes and they never open again, so I don't feel any more pain". For a parent, this was awful. I will never forget looking at him and wondering why and how this had happened and where my little happy boy had gone. As my son was diagnosed with autism we had access to the ASD team. We contacted the team and the team saw him and spoke with him. The team felt his needs had clearly gone beyond its area of expertise so it referred him to CAMHS. We waited 12 months for an appointment. At the appointment we met with the psychologist. She spoke with us and my son and said she would see us again. We were waiting six months for the next appointment. When we got there we had a different psychiatrist who asked us why we had turned up that day and why we were there. I had to show him my letter to prove we had an appointment. He did not know we were due to arrive there.

There were another few months of going back and forth and each time there was a different psychiatrist. This upset my son. As he was nervous he did not wish to speak to somebody he did not know. Then he was discharged. We did not know he was discharged. We found out six months later from our GP. We got no letter of discharge. In October 2016, my son attempted suicide. We took him to our GP who sent us to the emergency department. We were sitting in a waiting room full of other people for over four hours. Nobody had seen our son. Then a nurse came to tell us that we had to go to a different hospital two hours away as the hospital did not have a child psychiatrist to see our son. We went to the next hospital and the CAMHS team was wonderful. Its members calmed him down and spoke to us. They highlighted that they were extremely concerned for my son and said there was a CAMHS team in our hospital.

It said it would fax our hospital and explain the urgency of the situation. It was hoped that we would be seen within the next few days. That did not happen. We waited three weeks for an appointment. It does not seem long, but when one's child is physically trying to hurt himself, is not sleeping, is hearing voices and is terrified, three weeks is a very long time to be dealing with something that one does not know how to deal with. We eventually contacted a local politician in our area and we got an appointment. We went to CAMHS and it spoke to our son. He explained that he was hearing voices and that the voices were telling him to kill himself. He was terrified. He was seeing shadows and hearing footsteps. He was convinced, especially at night, that someone was coming to kill him. My son was terrified. He was told that the voices are not real and that he should not listen to them. That was not enough of an intervention for him.

We were told that our son needed to be watched 24-7 and that he should be physically restrained if necessary. Every night he would be so scared that he would cry, scream and try to run out of the house because he felt that something was chasing him. He would eventually fall asleep in my arms, exhausted. My partner works nights, so I would be at home with my son on my own. I remember that I was awake for almost 72 hours straight. My eyesight went fuzzy and I had a headache. I did not feel tired anymore, but I did not feel alive either. On one occasion I was so terrified that I would fall asleep I walked up and down the hall with a cup of coffee in my hand at 3 o'clock in the morning. We knew that this could not continue. We had Rhys in the bed with us sometimes but he did not want that. He was almost 13 years old and sleeping in between us was not acceptable, so we bought a bed and put it into our room. For safety we locked him into the room with us every night, and at least that way I could sleep and Rhys could possibly sleep as well.

On another night my son attempted to seriously self-harm and we took him to the emergency department because it was out of hours. Rhys and I were put into a small waiting room and we had to wait for over two hours for the on-call psychiatrist. Rhys escaped from that room that night and ran through an emergency department full of adults screaming, "Please let me die". He was trying to escape from the hospital and get outside. He said that he wanted to run under a car and die. I took flight after him. Security and a nurse did likewise. We caught him and had to bring him back. It was so distressing. We were in this room and all these people were looking at us. It was awful. An emergency department is not the answer. It is not able to deal with this situation. The environment is wrong. It is not very safe. I was in that room with him and he was still able to get out of that room. It is not a suitable situation for a child. When we saw the on-call psychiatrist that night he was put on medication to calm him and help him sleep, but he was sent home that night. He slept in between us. He did not really sleep but spent the night hitting his head in an attempt to get the voices out.

In subsequent months, we were over and back to CAMHS regularly, but he did not improve much. When there was a small improvement, even if he had said that he wanted to die on the same day, he was discharged. Only two weeks ago Rhys attempted suicide. He left a suicide message on my phone. To me that is an escalation. He is thinking more about what he wants to do. He was saying goodbye to his mother and telling me that it was not my fault. My partner caught him, thankfully. He is now being seen by CAMHS again. He is on stronger medication, but the sad reality is that medication is not always the answer. He needs psychology. We have been told that he is not going to receive this from CAMHS. He is now on a waiting list in the disability services for psychology. He has been on that waiting list for almost four years. This psychologist does not exist in our area. There is no psychologist for a child over six years of age. Why is that? How can that be? My son is one of many children who need this help. CAMHS is overworked and understaffed, which is unfair on it and its clients. The waiting lists are far too long for children who need help now. Children presenting with suicidal and mental health issues cannot always wait for 12 months. They need action now.

I want to point out that there is no out of hours service for children with mental health issues. There is no safe environment for a child to go into an accident and emergency department presenting with mental health issues. I would never allow my son to be put into an adult psychiatric unit. This should never happen. It is not acceptable or appropriate. As a country, we need to improve these services, open more children's psychiatric units and have more psychiatrists and psychologists available for our children. It is not okay for a child with suicidal thoughts or who has attempted suicide to be put on a waiting list. They need help and intervention and they need it now. This is a basic human right which our children are being denied. Our children deserve better treatment, and their well-being needs to be prioritised. Unfortunately, this is an ongoing issue for my son, who is telling me that he has given up and that he just wants to die. I believe him. He does not want to feel pain any more. As a family we have been badly affected by this. We cannot go out with our friends. We cannot bring him to his favourite places, such as the zoo, anymore. If a place is too crowded he gets too stressed and is hearing things that are not there. He is afraid to go out and play sometimes. We are at home all day, every day. He just wants to go to school.

I want my little boy back, that beautiful, happy little child that had so much energy and loved living life. I need him back. He needs to come back. Can anyone imagine being a parent and seeing this awful transformation occur? We have tried everything in our power but it is clearly beyond the parents' control. I am scared that my son will achieve his goal. I am scared that he is going to die. I want my son to get the help he needs. I want to get my once happy little family back, and I want my beautiful boy to get his confidence back. He once said that he wants to become an animal biologist. I want to see him achieve this goal. I want my son to go out and play, like any other child. I want to have to ring him to tell him to come home as it's late, like any other parent, and not to sit at home with him watching to see if his mood is tipping and have to shadow him in case he tries to harm himself. I am asking this committee to help my son. I am asking the committee to help every child in our country presenting with these issues. Today I am asking the members of the committee to think, "What if this was my child?" What can we do to help this child? How can we move forward?