Debate contribution: Sensory Room: Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children

Debate contribution by Mr Colin McGrath on 4 November 2025.

MLA

Mr Colin McGrath

Party at the time

Social Democratic and Labour Party

Date

4 November 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Adjournment

Heading

Sensory Room: Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5217214

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I thank Cheryl for bringing the topic to the Chamber and for achieving the second full agreement in a row about what needs to happen. There is no issue more important than this one. I also thank Erin McAllister. I received the email and signed up to the petition because of its importance and its sense. Sometimes there are complicated reasons for doing or not doing things, but there are other times at which things are so obvious that you wonder why we have not already done them.

Although this is an Adjournment debate about the Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children and whilst the hospital goes to great pains to point out that it is not a regional service for everything, some of what it does is on a regional basis, so we can all subscribe to the fact that our constituents may be using that facility and benefiting from it. In doing some gentle research in preparation for the debate, I thought about who could actually benefit from a sensory room. If we look at the figures, we see that 5·9% of our school-age children have autism, somewhere in the broad region of 45,000 to 60,000 have ADHD and 31,000 have learning difficulties. There certainly is not and cannot be a suggestion that there is no need for a facility such as that. When we look at why we should have such facilities — others mentioned this — we see that it is about the fact that it reduces the stress and the pressure. We know that emergency departments are busy places. Thankfully, in the past year or two, I have only had one occasion to be in an emergency department. It was busier than an airport and than a bus station; so much was happening. Whilst I was there with somebody who was sick, I really felt for the people who were sick and having to be that environment. I thought, "This just is not the place to be". There is nothing calming or comforting in it — it is a very harsh environment — so I can only imagine how the effect of it is multiplied for people who really struggle with all the things that take place around them. We also have a legal duty on equality: if we are going to provide services and do so on an equal basis, it is really important that we provide for those with autism, ADHD or learning difficulties so that they are able to access services in a way that works for them. We have a number of good examples in various units around the country. The South West Acute Hospital's sensory room has been referenced, we have the Bluestone unit at Craigavon Hospital, and Altnagelvin Area Hospital has a sensory room that opened in 2021 for those with learning difficulties, so we have lots of examples about the place. Maybe it is about extending that provision rather than having to start again from the very beginning. When it comes to cost and practicality, the emergency department is a small space and every inch of it is crucial to delivering its aims, but, as has been mentioned — this is well rehearsed — there is a cost benefit to spending a little money and securing the space: it gets people through the emergency department more quickly. That means that people are able to go to it in the first instance, so there is less opportunity for illnesses and conditions to progress. When people turn up much later, it costs much more to put it all together. When we look at it from that cost perspective, we see that it is reasonable and sensible to try to help to move that on. There are a couple of things that we would all love to see — the SDLP would subscribe to them — including the space being made available in the Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children and its being co-designed with users. Experts out there have been contacting us about it, and we have experts in the Public Gallery who, I am sure, would be only too willing to give of their experience and expertise to make sure that what could be provided would really work for people. That is something that we should try for, so that, when it is delivered, hopefully, and people need something from us, we will know that it will help them. Thank you for securing the debate today; I am delighted to support it.

753 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 13:46 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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