Ms Teresa Mallon:

Following on from what Dr. Harnett said, while we have all of those challenges in terms of recruitment, change in needs and capital investment, the only one that we have not given a lot of time to is around multidisciplinary supports. We have people with changing needs who need quite a significant amount of additional supports. Within the day services, there is a significant lack of multidisciplinary supports available to people who require it. While we talk about budgets, investment and sustainability and all of that, there is also a requirement to look at how we get the best out of the resources that we have as well. One of the quick wins would be in the context of investment in training and upskilling of existing staff, because the whole model of New Directions is around supporting people in the community, more inclusive models and looking at natural supports. For example, the whole area of supported employment for people with disabilities was mentioned earlier. There has been a lack of investment in training in day services for many years, outside of what is mandatory training. There was a requirement that for those working on the front line, a safe-lifting course needed to be completed and if administering medication, safe administration of medication courses had to be done. All the other training that is required that brings you to a place where you are looking at your model in the context of building more inclusive environments and supporting people within the community, and bringing the natural supports in the community on board like volunteers, for example, need investment to make that happen. That is a quick win if the funding was there to make it happen.

One of the other things that needs to be looked at is cross-government departmental collaboration response. Supported employment, for example, was mentioned earlier on. Years ago, we were in a better place in terms of the numbers of people with disabilities, who our services were supporting, in mainstream employment. These were people with disabilities, with all levels of needs and supports. Supported employment does not sit under New Directions and as a result of this, it has fallen between two stools and is not getting the same focus. There is a national programme called EmployAbility, which is an interim programme, but the criteria linked to those programmes exclude people with disabilities and higher support needs. We know that what works in terms of a model is a whole place training and support model, which has worked well both internationally and in Ireland. It does not sit, however, within the New Directions programme. If we could get that sorted and moving on, that would have a huge impact in terms of the quality of life of people with disabilities, as well as building an inclusive society and looking at natural supports.

There is no doubt that from everything that was said today, there is a significant investment required in terms of the resources under all the teams we spoke about. Equally, it is about Government working around transport and supported employment in order to get them aligned and to make them work.