To ask the Minister of Health, pursuant to AQW 25484/22-27, how the South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust assesses need or places children with complex needs in residential care if it does not keep a record of families that have requested it.

The South Eastern Trust holds this information on personal files in relation to all parental requests for residential care, however this information is not centralised on an accessible information management system. Locating this information would require a manual trawl of hundreds of files. During February 2024, the DoH introduced a new information gathering template to collate information on the numbers of children in Residential Care, those availing of Residential Short Breaks and those on the Edge of Care. This analysis alongside the 6-monthly submission of the Statutory Functions Report and Corporate Parenting Reports to the DoH SPPG, provides information for both the Trust and DoH SPPG to assess the need for children with complex needs for Residential Care.

The South Eastern HSC Trust is engaged with the Strategic Reform Board, and the associated Children’s Social Care Workstreams. There is also work ongoing within the Residential Care Workstream in respect of the Projected Residential Care Need for Children with Disability across all five HSC Trusts. This work (alongside other work being completed across the Children’s Social Care Reform Workstreams) will assist with informing the future commissioning of services, in accordance with the Departmental Children’s Disability Framework.