AQW 21790/22-27


Mr Nick Mathison
Alliance Party
Strangford


Tabled Date: 03/02/2025
Answered On Date: 18/02/2025
Priority Written: No


Question:
To ask the Minister of Health, pursuant to AQW 20696/22-27, whether work is being undertaken to develop a model for Allied Health Professionals to be located in the Education Authority Local Impact Teams to meet the needs of children and young people with special educational needs.


Answer:
The Public Health Agency (PHA) and the Education Authority (EA) have hosted two regional workshops on 1 December 2024 and 4 February 2025 to support integrated planning and enhanced working between the five HSC Trust Regional Integrated Support for Education (RISE) Teams (which includes AHP staff) and the EA Special Educational Needs and Disabilities(SEND) Local IMPACT (Integrated Multi-Specialist Professionals Actively Collaborating Together) Teams (LITs) which are planned to be established and operational in schools in Sept 2025.
Work is underway to map existing service structures, services and service models across these teams which operate in the mainstream school sector to identify areas for integration/commonality. This will include a review of supports delivered at a universal, targeted and specialist/intensive level to consider opportunities to embed innovative and collaborative interventions. In addition, joint training and knowledge-sharing sessions are being planned between health and education professionals across RISE and LITs and the development of robust complementary interface pathways to support seamless models of support.
The PHA are keen to continue to work closely with EA to further enhance collaborative working in line with the Children’s Services Co-operation Act 2015. The PHA are keen to develop more multi-disciplinary and multi-agency working across AHP services supporting children in Special Schools with EA as the LITs are further developed. The PHA are also keen to work closely with the Department of Education (DE) and EA to implement objectives set out in DE End to End Review, to consider the type and best model of support which is required to meet the holistic needs of children and young people that makes best use of health and education resources.