AQW 20315/22-27

Mrs Michelle Guy
Alliance Party
Lagan Valley

Tabled Date: 09/01/2025
Answered On Date: 17/01/2025
Priority Written: No

Question:
To ask the Minister of Education whether the new Local IMPACT Teams will have health professionals as part of the team.

Answer:

The Education Authority (EA) has advised that:

The Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) Local IMPACT Teams (LITs) model roll-out will initially involve restructuring the EAs existing separate SEND support services and for September 2025 this will not directly include health services. However, the long-term vision for the model has always been to maximise local operational co-ordination with relevant health services and other non-SEND EA services.

The geographic network of the LITs has been aligned to Health and Social Care (HSC) Trust areas to enable this in future and work is currently underway in terms of aligning the LIT operating model with those of the Regional Integrated Support for Education (RISE) offers within each Trust. Work is also underway in terms of regionalising the EA's speech and language class provision in alignment with relevant Trust operating models and the LITs.