AQW 8700/22-27

Mr Nick Mathison
Alliance Party
Strangford

Tabled Date: 12/03/2024
Answered On Date: 27/03/2024
Priority Written: No

Question:
To ask the Minister of Education what work he is undertaking alongside the Minister of Health to identify relevant interfaces between health, social care and education service provision, to ensure that children requiring early intervention can access effective multi-disciplinary teams which can cater for a range of complex needs.

Answer:

In line with the duty to co-operate set out in the Children’s Service Co-operation (Northern Ireland) Act 2015, my officials have been working closely with their counterparts in the Department of Health (DoH), the Education Authority (EA), the Public Health Agency (PHA) and the local Health Trusts to create the conditions for enhanced integration across both systems to improve opportunities for early intervention and the development of integrated supports for children and young people with special educational needs/disability (SEN/D).

The experience of joint working across both the health and education systems during Covid-19 highlighted the added value of working in a more collaborative way. My officials having been engaging with colleagues from across health as part of the End-to-End (E2E) Review of SEN and the associated workstreams.

It is my intention to write to the Minister of Health, outlining emergent opportunities, as they are identified via the workstreams, that will enable both departments to work together to progress transformation across two very distinct but interdependent systems to provide the efficient and effective outcomes to services for children and young people with SEN/D and their families.