Dr. Kathleen MacLellan:

I will pick up on some of the points relating to the statutory home care scheme. I concur that it is critical that we have a single assessment and that the decision is not made about what scheme people go into or where they end up before they have the assessment. We are introducing the interRAI assessment as the standard assessment across the country and we are assessing, through the personalised budgets project, whether that or the Imosphere assessment is the best one to use for those with disabilities. These are standard, comprehensive assessment tools, which look at a number of areas from physical assessments to neurological assessments to a frailty assessment, if necessary, or other assessments. The use of this type of assessment, whether somebody is being assessed in hospital or within the community, will change the landscape. It is used extensively in home care schemes and other schemes in countries like New Zealand and Canada and we are learning from those. It is absolutely essential that we create an assessment and fund that assessment. A decision will then be made with the individual as to whether he or she will have care in the home, the type of care involved, the supports that are needed and whether long-term care is needed. Reassessments are also put in place. Those things will all form part of the statutory home care scheme that is under development.

The other important innovation is the task force on personalised budgets. This is a real innovation to see whether individuals who are allocated their own personalised budgets can decide on the type of care they need and where they need it. Currently, 32 individuals have been allocated personalised budgets but the intent is to grow that up to 180 participants. Through that we can take lessons as to whether we can introduce a broader form of personalised budgets.

I apologise if I was not clear about the data systems. The national ability supports system is there to gather information on the 56,000 people who access the specialist health and social care supports within the health system. That includes people with an intellectual disability and those with a physical or sensory disability, rather than all those who identify themselves as having a disability either through the CSO or other systems. It relates to planning for the health and social care systems.

I concur that there is a cross-Government aspect to this. If we are truly to support people with a disability, we need to be working with the Departments responsible for transport and housing - which we are doing in relation to the development of a new housing strategy - as well as across education. There is a real need for all our Departments to come together if we are to take a holistic approach to supporting those with disabilities, whether that is those who identify as such or those who have come through our specialist health and social care systems.

There were a number of questions about the steering committee. It might be useful if Mr. O'Regan took those because he will have some information that will be of help to the committee.