The Department is engaging with the Department for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science regarding the provision of additional college places to address the enormous challenges in recruiting health and social care professionals in disability services. To expand the pipeline of health and social care personnel, a cross-departmental group headed up by my Department has been established to consider the current and future supply need for disciplines of staff working in disability services. The group's membership includes representatives of the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science along with the Department of Health, the HSE, the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, and the Department of Education. It will identify which disciplines of staff need increased supply within disability services, how many staff are needed in each discipline and at which grade, and how the disciplines should be prioritised, along with the numbers of graduate places by discipline in higher education institutes, HEIs, the HEIs' capacity to deliver on current and future need, and employers’ capacity to provide necessary placements as required by CORU. That is the real challenge, because there are not enough therapists in post to provide that clinical governance and oversight at the moment given our teams are severely depleted.
On further education courses that may be considered to upskill people, a number of short courses related to the disciplines I mentioned, excluding speech and language therapy, have been identified. As for speech and language therapy courses, the Department is currently engaged with SOLAS in respect of the provision of speech and language assistant courses planned for 2023.
I fully recognise this area requires specific focus and attention to support the delivery of disability services. In my follow-up response, I might expand on why it is not just about courses but also about using our current talent pool and giving them additional opportunities such as master’s degree programmes.