Ms Sonia Magaharan:

I echo what Mr. Walsh has said. I have been my job for 34 years and have worked in various settings. Again, I enjoy my job. My concern is that the job has changed since I joined the service. When I started working in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services we were able to work with younger children and progress things quicker but now the work is more complex. In terms of 16 to 18-year olds, the issues are more complicated, we must deal with more emergencies and there is more ambulance chasing. As I said earlier, we often miss the younger children.

It is often only when they bubble over that they also become emergencies. At the start of my career, I worked in adult nursing. I moved to child nursing to be able to make a difference earlier in patients' lives. We do not make a difference early enough. Most of my colleagues agree on that point. We usually deal with emergencies, which is not how it should be happening.