Mr. Alan Power:

The situation is similar to that of the assessment of need process and the changes made to it. Children need a combination of healthcare and education. If we look across the water to the UK, we see a legal entitlement to an education, health and care plan, that is, an all-encompassing plan for the child's needs. In mainstream education here, there is really only involvement where there is a crisis situation in the school. We had a system in special schools that worked very well. The therapists were on site in the schools. There was a team of therapists working with the teachers to ensure that any challenges could be addressed immediately so that the class could be set up. In spite of every stakeholder involved, including the schools, the specialists and the families, asking for it not to be done and even the Minister of State saying it would be paused and not done, this system was changed under the progressing disability services model. We are now trying to put the genie back in the bottle by getting these therapists back into the schools. In our special school, the principal is now working with 12 different children's disability network teams, CDNTs, to try to get therapists to support the different children. How do you unravel that? The parents have now been allocated to different CDNTs and are now going to lose those teams as we slowly put the therapists back into the schools. It is similar to the situation with the assessment of need process. Where is the accountability for senior managers in the Departments that are making these decisions, which will damage these children for the rest of their lives?