Ms Geraldine Moran:

I will start by speaking about my experience. My history was working in special schools. I worked in a variety of different special schools, pre-PDS. I worked very closely with teachers, and I was very fortunate to work in some really special schools. I used to compliment them on their level of knowledge. By going into different areas, I realised that the skill that is there.

Yet, if you want to give a service to a child and a family, this needs to be available across all environments. The PDS programme has allowed us to do that. It has allowed clinicians on the ground to provide a service right across the board. We speak of clinics, buildings and so on, but the real work is done with families in their homes. Clinicians go into the home, meet the families, see where they are, and go into the school. It is a wonderful asset to be able to go across all environments to provide a three-tier model of supports, namely, universal, targeted and direct supports. The progressing disability services programme has allowed us to use that framework to give a combination of supports across all tiers, and that has worked really well.

This interdisciplinary idea has also worked very well, such as where a speech and language therapist and an occupational therapist might go to support a child who needs support in settling into their class, etc. All this interdisciplinary work is working really well. As I mentioned earlier, if you speak with CDNTs, as is mentioned in the roadmap, the families are pleased when they do receive the therapies. The worry, as the Deputy pointed out earlier, is about all the work that is going into assessments. Unfortunately, then, because of a lack of resources, that is not allowing staff to get on with the therapies. While the piece of paper is wonderful to have, if it is blocking you from accessing services, that is a challenge. Those are a couple of aspects. Dr. O’Leary will be coming from a different, more community-based perspective.