Ms Karen O'Mahony:

For us, many of our families have similar stories but we also must acknowledge that there are families who have multiple children with diagnoses. Some families have three and four children diagnosed. It is not an easy journey for one child, so consider the navigation for families of four and five with two or three children on the spectrum and two that maybe are not. There has to be somebody there to support that family. It is not okay any more to say that PDS will do. It has been spoken of over the past nine years but it came in at a time when we were already at a crisis point. There were already waiting list numbers through the roof. The pandemic was another excuse for them to pull back loads of stuff. They could have very effectively still rolled out services in a very safe way. They could still have come back earlier in Covid and done that but the support was not there and it is still not there. That needs to change massively for families. There will be massive fractures. A lot of our young adult non-autistic family members have mental health issues because of the life they have been living and are living. They are falling through the cracks also. Families are trying to navigate it all and they are expected to be the occupational therapist, the speech and language therapist and the psychologist. It is easier if the supports are put into the school where they can help to support the teachers to do their job better and to be more confident about teaching in that environment. We know then that the family has a little bit of a buffer. The child is in school and they have the therapists in the school so the educators and the therapist are working together. That makes life a little bit easier but it makes a hell of a lot of difference to that child. That is the most important thing. The children are the centre point here. This country is not child centred and it is shameful that our children are not looked upon as being the centre point. That really does need to change.