Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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133. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth the measures she will introduce to improve supports including access to therapies for children with additional needs; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [7773/25]

Hildegarde Naughton (Galway West, Fine Gael)
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Under the 2025 Programme for Government – “Securing Ireland’s Future”, this Government is committed to renewing efforts to enhance services in order to better support the needs of children with disabilities.

The HSE advises that Children’s Disability Network Teams (CDNTs) are currently providing services and supports for over 42,800 children. Nevertheless, I acknowledge that at the end of 2024, 12,920 children were awaiting initial contact with a CDNT and there were over 14,200 Assessments of Need (AONs) overdue for completion.

Work is ongoing by the HSE to maximise the capacity of CDNTs via recruitment campaigns, I am pleased to note that the HSE has advised a 17% increase with the net addition of 272 staff in CDNTs in 2024 compared to 2023.

Other measures to address the Assessment of Need (AON) backlog, is funding of €10m to Children’s Disability Services in 2025. This will facilitate the continuation of the Assessment of Need Waiting List Initiative in 2025, to enable the procurement of private assessments for long-waiting families, with funding allocated to deliver circa 2,850 AONs and allow for additional capacity in the assessment teams in the form of assessment and liaison officers.

Increased funding will provide for the recruitment of various positions across CDNTs (including 20 Senior Therapist posts, 20 Staff Grade posts, 20 Health and Social Care Assistant posts and 15 Clinical Trainee posts). Both AONs and therapy interventions are provided by the CDNTs, therefore increased CDNT staffing will seek to assist with rebalancing the delivery of therapy interventions and AONs.

Finally, it is important to note that some bespoke initiatives designed to provide specialist supports for children with complex needs will be supported, to address potential gaps in service by augmenting CDNT capacity with centralised specialist supports that can be used by parents and provide a support to CDNTs around the country.