Mr. Brian Higgins:

The Deputy asked what we need. We need a tiered approach. Not every child needs 37 hours of assessment. It helps us to get the most of out of a stressed system, but it is also the way we should be doing business. We are piloting the tiered approach to ASD assessment in our area and getting good results. We are only starting off in our implementation. It is early days and we need more data, but the experience of doing it has been positive because we are using intervention as a form of assessment. We are getting back to intervention first and using the information from that as a source of observation and diagnosis in some cases. We have been surprised by how effective that has been in certain cases. It is not for every child - some children need a more complex tier of assessment. That is the direction in which we need to be going. In terms of assessment of need, there is a legislative obligation that we cannot get out of, but if we are giving interventions within six months the number of assessment of need referrals drops off.

If we are using this tiered approach to get back to intervention first, based on obvious need rather than cumbersome assessment, we will be putting our resources in the right direction and clients will benefit.