Ms Fiona Wright:

Retaining staff is always a challenge. We are very lucky in the Courts Service that the staff dedicated to the drug treatment court – Maeve Foley and her colleague Louise – are very committed to it and passionate about it. This can be seen in the work they do. They are in the Courts Service for a long period. Although the staff are not specially trained in that they are not therapists or counsellors by any means, they do have trauma-informed practice training and are very much supported in the organisation in that regard. We have supports in place internally in the Court Service to support people going through traumatic experiences like those in question. It is a matter of continuing with this, dealing with any staff rotation that occurs and offering training. In the future, we envisage getting properly trained staff and having a proper training programme put in place for the people dealing with the drug treatment court and the specialties associated with that.