Ms Kate Duggan:

I referenced already the whole-of-government approach to alternative care. There are 6,000 children in the care of the State and we believe they should be prioritised across Departments for services. The State is their corporate parent and if we were the parent of a child who needed additional supports, we would be looking to get those for them and that is something we would love to see in the alternative care policy. Outside of that, obviously the responsibility for the provision of mental health, disability and addiction services lies with the HSE and we recognise it is struggling with the demand for its services and there are waiting lists for those services. We advocate for children to be able to access them but we have also started to increase the therapeutic services we can provide to children and young people coming into care. We have been funded for six of what we would call generic therapeutic teams. We want children coming into care to get a therapeutic assessment as part of their care plan to be able to support their care plan. That is not to say it replaces any access they might need to specialist disability or mental health services, so we would love to see the expansion and growth of that service, as well as funding. We have also had a huge amount of investment in our specialist therapeutic services and we have really welcomed that in relation to our Barnahus service, which members may be familiar with in terms of children who have been sexually abused, and our NIAPP service that looks at young people who are showing indicators of sexualised or harmful behaviour. We are committed and want to continue to work on the development and investment in therapeutic services more broadly across the State and in supporting us to deliver better care planning for children in care.