Mr. Mark Smyth:

To echo what a lot of colleagues here have said, if we are to make successes of counselling within schools the pathfinder project has to be initiated. That came from the youth mental health task force recommendations from many years ago. It is the key that is going to ensure that we have cross departmental co-operation to make this a success. From our perspective, we are not really sure what the delays are or why it has been held up. That is essential to make this work. I think that everyone here wants to ensure that young people get the best care they can. We all come from disparate organisations but we all share the same values of early intervention and supporting. I do not think we should get into our own specific silos as counsellors or psychologists or psychotherapists, because we all want the same thing. In reality, we can all work together. We will bring different skill sets to it. The model referred to in Dorset has a range of people on the team, including educators who have expertise in particular aspects of education and interaction with mental health, counsellors and mental health leads. We need to look at a model similar to that, which encompasses a range of skills and expertise. It is very similar to what Sharing the Vision has talked about. It is not about professional silos any more where you have to have one of these, one of those and one of the other. It is about what skill set is needed within the school environment to support the young people, the teachers and the principals in the intersection between education and mental health. I am guessing that we all would be on the same page. There is room for psychologists, counsellors, occupational therapists and speech and language therapists because we all have something that we can bring to it. If we are all working together like that Dorset team does, there will be much better outcomes for kids than just having individual disciplines