The Government regards these more fundamental structural and legislative reforms as the key to enabling improvement in delivery of services for children with special needs and their parents. It is intended the new education for persons with disabilities Bill will cover the range of issues including assessment, responsibility for provision, appeal processes, individual education plans and so on. In drafting the Bill, the Department of Education and Science is attempting to clarify how the needs of individual children should be met, both by the education and health services. Clearly the Departments of Health and Children and Education and Science need to work together at the macro level with a view to ensuring that we have "joined-up Government" in terms of development of policy in respect of responses and the resourcing of services for children with special needs. Equally, at local level, there are issues whereby health boards, service providers and education services can operate in an integrated way. Clearly, the Department of Education and Science's capacity to work in an integrated way on the ground locally is very limited at present. For this reason, the national council for special education will be particularly critical in enabling integrated responses to be pulled together at local level.