Ms Hannah N? Ghiolla Mhairt?n:

Our focus has always very much been on reforming CAMHS and ensuring that what is set out in the CAMHS operational guidelines, which is multidisciplinary mental health support, is delivered. CAMHS is the specialist mental health service. This is always our key message. Many children also access other services. A lot of thought needs to be put into how best to integrate services. We do not really have the answer for this, to be honest. Many of our members ask whether there is some way to merge the two services or to set up special mental health services for neurodivergent children which can look at treating the child holistically. All of these would have to be researched. In the short term, we very much at least want any type of gatekeeping in respect of autistic children to stop. The long-term measure would need further consideration.