Ms Sonia Magaharan:

ADHD, ASD, Tourette syndrome and dyslexia come under neurodevelopmental conditions. They affect the brain. The co-morbidity between some of these conditions is high. If one has ASD, there is a 40% chance one will also have ADHD. As I stated in the submission, they operate neurodevelopmental teams in the UK. What happens here is the child comes into CAMHS because we do not know what he or she has and we say maybe this guy has ASD. Maybe the child has queued and we say he or she may need to go into another queue. We tend to hold onto those cases if they do go into another queue because we feel that those who come in deserve a service.

It would be good if we had an integrated service, such as the Deputy is talking about, where we have a paediatrician and can look at people's health needs because children with autism spectrum disorder, ASD, often have many physical health conditions too. One can provide wraparound support. Rather than us working in separate teams, there needs to be coming together to provide a more joined-up service. People are holistic. One cannot just treat a toe and forget about the leg. It is connected. That is how I would see a neurodevelopmental team. It would look at all these conditions because it is very rare to see ADHD on its own. Other conditions always exist with it.