Ms Sinéad McGee:

We need a service for the less severe range of mental health issues in our children. Let us not wait until they have got to the point of attempting suicide. We need to nip it in the bud. Maybe that is not an issue for CAMHS but for the HSE to provide psychology services within the community. There are no psychology services for children younger than 18 in north county Dublin. We need more staff. Many of the staff in CAMHS who I have been involved with are temporary or locum staff. Recently, they lost a really good psychiatrist who was a locum for two years and who wanted a permanent contract but there was none. They are caught up in unnecessary paperwork and more children are then put at risk. That needs to change.

It is important to include every discipline on the team. In my local CAMHS, there was no dietician. There might have been one in another CAMHS but one does not go between the services. One has to stay with the service in one's location. That needs to change.

Access 24 hours a day, seven days a week is very important. I had to take my daughter who is 18 into accident and emergency because she had taken a serious overdose. She had to have an antidote through her arm and sat on a plastic chair for 21 hours while getting it. For three of those hours she was vomiting severely into a bag. She was 17. She should not have been sitting in an adult accident and emergency hospital. These children are vulnerable and it is very hard as a parent to watch that. At one stage they gave me another plastic chair, and then they had to take it away so I had to stand beside her. That is no place for a young person going through a trauma. They are not attempting suicide for attention. They are not well people and they need help and support, not to be put into a more stressful environment. In one of the letters I mentioned, the parents spoke of the relief they felt when they got a letter to say their daughter was on a priority waiting list. They rang their local CAMHS to see what that meant. That means months. Priority should be a couple of weeks. It is such a stressful situation for a parent, watching their child 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It is unfair to the whole family unit. That needs to be reduced to weeks at most.

It is unfair to the entire family as a unit. It is too hard. That needs to be reduced to weeks at most. Having the staff numbers required by each team and implementing the recommendations in A Vision for Change will improve all that and remove those waiting lists.

On support for the parents, as chairperson of the carers forum in Dublin city, I have started organising coffee mornings within certain branches. They will extend even further and I hope will be run every month. It is a place where parents can sit down either with me or other parents and where they do not feel isolated. Isolation is a huge factor. It makes any illness very powerful if one feels isolated and one cannot talk about it. Having the opportunity to be around other parents, be able talk freely and not feel as though one is being judged is very important.