Ms Lisa Marie Clinton:

When I first launched it, I went to all of these to say we had outcomes and were piloting and offering opportunities. Bearing in mind that this probably was six years ago, when you look at what the status was for these entities, potentially not having Wi-Fi or an awareness of technology, I am not sure the readiness was there or that they had the funds or infrastructure to implement. A lot has changed in those few years, in that we have those systems in place to enable schools and entities. I remember I met representatives of one organisation in Dublin and they did not have Wi-Fi. They could not even send out newsletters so trying to take possibly an iPad or a mobile solution to offer, the infrastructure was not even there. We are now doing a lot more to see how we can work together. I would love to do a pilot to replicate what we have seen elsewhere, including in Canada, and to get a local employment setting, schools and funders to do a pilot and to see what the outcomes are. We do not want to just invest in and scale up something that is not best practice. Let us go through a process to see what works, what is effective, what are the outcomes and what needs to happen for this to be utilised elsewhere. I definitely would be willing to share a framework of what that pilot might look like, utilising multiple stakeholders and the transition plan. We need to look at it like we do in early intervention. The earlier we can bring in these services, the more successful they are. We could have something whereby there must be a transition plan before the SUSI, application process begins at the age of 16 and that it must cover these different areas, be it that there is less focus on the academic and more on the functional life skills. What skills does this person need to live independently? Where are they at now and can we do an assessment on them? Where do they need to be and what does this mean for their life? What does it look like for employment? What does their home life look like, based on that individual and their home setting? We try to prepare them for adulthood because no parent wants to look at their child as an adult but it will happen. As an autistic child will become an autistic adult, how can we predict and look at these requirements? One example I heard of is a student who had no services set up for afterwards. That student was leaving school at the age of 18 and had to wait for a person to pass away in an adult service before they could get a space. We do not want that. We might put something in place but we also need to look at where the services and the resources are. I would definitely propose that we look at a transition plan and service model that has multiple stakeholders and can be implemented in schools in collaboration with all the relevant entities.