I am cautiously optimistic about the announcement today by the Minister, Deputy Foley, and the Minister of State, Deputy Higgins, and I wish them well. I am going to give a different slant and focus on the needs piece followed by the assessment piece. I have met and listened to parents, educators from the earliest stage, teachers, those working with young adults and therapists in my area of Meath East. Focusing on the needs, there are many local initiatives that can actually be enacted using alternative respite budgets, treatment purchase funding, therapies such as art, drama, equine and music, and investment in sensory and nurture rooms within existing early years and school facilities. There are colleges of further education and training, for example in Dunboyne in my area, that are training medical and social care administrators who would be able to free up therapists' time. There is an inconvenient truth here that was manifest in the HSE recruitment embargo of 2022 to 2023 and was preceded by the cancellation of developmental checks during the SARSCoV2 restrictions from 2020 to 2022. We have had four years that have effectively contributed to this backlog. The ages of the children affected concurs with that. For four-year-olds, five-year-olds, six-year-olds and seven-year-olds, that timeline is concurrent. There is another area that is working very well but is under threat, and that is the area of personalised budgets, a pilot scheme set up by the HSE that needs to be mainstreamed. Families use the budget to purchase bespoke services for their children, including teenagers and young adults. Families can be trusted to manage the funding effectively and efficiently. For example, I am holding up a piece of art by my friend Amy who is 22 years of age and has autism. She is pursuing a level 5 and a level 6 ETB art course at Grennan Mill Craft School. Leap Ireland supported Amy and her family through the personalised budget process to now reach her true potential. Last night, I saw the documentary, "Born That Way", a powerful account by Éamon Little of the Camphill communities that were set up by Gladys and Patrick Lydon. The activities they provided were suited to the abilities of the young adults who attended. Perversely and unfortunately, the Camphill communities were wound down. Now we have a home-sharing model that is being rolled out by the Health Service Executive. History has a habit of repeating itself. We have to take those learnings and implement them. I hope that the child, the teenager, the young adult will be at the very centre of all planning and delivery of services to meet their needs first. There can be no expensive layers of management to the provision of services. It should be needs first followed by the assessment. I have been reliably informed by disability services in my own area that by taking that approach, not every child might need the assessment. If the needs can be addressed in the community, that will probably filter out many hundreds.

Sentiment score: 0.14