Dr. Niall Muldoon:

-----whether it is more to do with mental health and addiction or mental health and disability. We are now into smaller cohorts but they are crucially vulnerable children who have had so much trauma in their lives that we should be making their path easier. Again, we need to go upstream and support the primary care system in order that those children have as much help as possible before they need CAMHS. That is why I would love to see counselling provided in every primary and secondary school. We have guidance counsellors within schools. Some of them are trained for therapeutic work and some are trained for other work. We just need to up our game there and make sure that counselling is available because that will lift off the primary care. That is where my idea came from for a pathfinder project, which I have mentioned before, where one office supports children with mental health. That smooth running with one office would help the Departments of children, Health and education because if there is good intervention at primary school level, then there will be less need for primary care. Similarly, if there is intervention at secondary school level then there is no need to go to CAMHS and if a person goes to CAMHS then the person is in better shape and has not slipped down the road of severe mental ill-health. We need to also look at addiction services. Again, I am not talking about a big investment. One or two services would provide a huge change for a lot of children who self-medicate now and find themselves using different drugs at a very early stage because of being traumatically impacted. So work needs to be done there. It is recognising the complication that many of those children have. If a child is even being thought about in terms of going into care then we, as a State, should note that child is traumatised and that, by its very nature, means the child needs therapeutic services, which should be wrapped around the child very quickly. Schools should be informed if a child needs help and should be allowed to facilitate that. Often children in foster care do not always say it. Children in care, if they are moved around, do not even get the chance to create the attachment that Ms Ward talked about. They move from one care centre to another and they go from one teacher to another in a different school.