Debate contribution: Support for Young Adults with Learning Difficulties and Complex Needs: Mid Ulster

Debate contribution by Ms Emma Sheerin on 20 January 2026.

MLA

Ms Emma Sheerin

Party at the time

Sinn Féin

Date

20 January 2026

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Adjournment

Heading

Support for Young Adults with Learning Difficulties and Complex Needs: Mid Ulster

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5348928

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Go raibh maith agat, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle.

Minister, I cannot imagine that you were surprised when you saw this item in the Order Paper, because I have brought the matter and issues related to it to you and your predecessor multiple times over the years. I find it very difficult to navigate the provision of respite and support, particularly for our young people and children with complex needs, learning disabilities and learning difficulties.

I have written to you in the past, Minister, about issues with respite provision in the Northern Health and Social Care Trust, specifically in the Mid Ulster part of the trust area. I have written to you about the likes of Hollybank in Magherafelt, which offers an unbelievable service. All the users of that centre and their families, who get respite through it, are blown away by the staff who work there and the care and attention to detail that they provide. There is not enough of it, however. We have a massive shortage of respite care, and there is a lack of assurance even about the calendar to which families would have had access in the past. There has been an increase on where we were during COVID, but we are not back to pre-COVID levels, and we want to see that addressed. Beyond that, direct payment hours are a postcode lottery. I am completely perplexed as to how direct payment hours are assessed and allocated in the Northern Trust. I have spoken to numerous social workers, who do their best with limited resources and try at times to rob Peter to pay Paul. We have an issue with the allocation of direct payment hours support for people who live in the most challenging of circumstances and situations. Parents come to me with young children who need 24-hour supervision or children who need to be fed and are non-verbal. They get in the range of four periods of seven and a half or eight hours of direct payment support in a week. The mothers are almost in tears. They cannot go to work, get a break or get a full night's sleep, because they are constantly on alert. Their cases would tug at anyone's heartstrings. It is really difficult to navigate trying to provide support to those people and to make the case for extra care. Sometimes it feels as though no one is listening. The case that prompted today's debate specifically is that of Callan Lanigan, one of my constituents, about whom I have previously contacted the trust and the Minister. At the end of November last year, I wrote to you, Minister, detailing Callan's circumstances and asked that you meet Callan, his mother, Cherisse, and me to discuss what increased support we could obtain for him. I was disappointed and Callan's mother was really disappointed that you would not meet us on that occasion. You provided instruction for someone from the trust to meet us, and that happened at the end of last week. We had a conversation that was probably as frustrating as the experience has been to date. Callan has ADHD, autism and learning difficulties, meaning that his challenging behaviours have oftentimes been misrepresented by people who should have been advocating for him and providing him with support. Callan was a pupil at Kilronan School in my constituency, and the fantastic work done there is a testament to that special school. That intervention really helped Callan, to the point at which he was able to leave there earlier than an awful lot of students in similar situations and move to a unit in a mainstream school, where again he excelled and got on really well. When his statement ran out at the age of 16, Callan faced a complete cliff edge, and he now has just one day a week at a tech in Cookstown. The strength of that woman, Cherisse, is beyond comprehension. She is a great advocate for her son during a really difficult time in her life. She lost her mother directly after COVID and has been the sole carer for Callan for all of his 17 and a half years on the planet. She has done everything in her power to get him the intervention that he needs, but, time and again, she faces the same brick wall. Callan gets only 13 hours of direct payment support a week, and that was only after a fight. Cherisse had to source the carers herself to provide that support. She has been to every charity and support service in the North of Ireland to try to get Callan into their service and to get him the intervention, help and engagement that he needs in order to thrive. Time and again, she hears the same message: "Yes, we think that our service probably would benefit Callan, but, because he does not have a learning disability diagnosis, he is not eligible for our support". We have brilliant charities and groups working in our area, such as Positive Futures, Praxis Care, Trinity Support and Care Services and Connect 2 Brilliance. All of them offer services that are commissioned by the trust for people with a learning disability. As Callan has just missed that threshold by the tiniest of margins, he is excluded from all those services, leaving him to linger in a wasteland. He has fallen between stools time and again. My ask to you, Minister, is that we do something for people like Callan who do not just fit in the box. In the previous mandate, the House passed legislation on autism services. Callan has an autism diagnosis, but none of those services deliver for people with autism. I want to understand what your Department is doing to commission services specifically for autism and to allow those people to get support and intervention at a time when it is so crucial. Callan is 17 and a half years old now. He has already regressed without that engagement in the past year and a half. Cherisse's fear is that he will regress further without targeted intervention at this point. There is no consistency across the board in how that is delivered. All sorts of supports are becoming available for people with autism in conjunction with another diagnosis. I want to understand what we are doing for people who do not have the same severity of diagnosis with regard to learning disability. I have also had conversations with people around a specific person-centred approach, looking at a person beyond the words on their diagnosis and trying to assess what their needs are on the basis of how they present at that point in time. I would love to know what consideration you have given to adopting that model and what scoping exercises you can do or have done on extending services on that basis when somebody with a particularly challenging diagnosis does not fit in the box that we have seen thus far. Time and again, Callan and his mum have been told that he has challenging behaviours. He has been labelled as "disruptive". He has had tutors and other people in positions of authority say that he is a danger to others in the classroom, stops others being able to learn and prevents other people from accessing what they are all there for. Callan is anxious. With the right support and the right person listening to him, talking to him and engaging with him as he deserves, he could thrive. The fact that he made so much progress at Kilronan School shows that. As I said, I had a meeting on Friday with Cherisse and someone from the learning disability team in the Northern Trust, a really helpful member of the team there who, I know, wants to support and provide help to Cherisse and Callan. However, his hands are tied because of the criteria currently set by the trust and your Department. I would like to see us overcome that. As they stand, the pathways and routes into those support services are far too restrictive and exclude a cohort of our young people — people like Callan, who needs somebody to make the case for him and deliver the targeted intervention that is so key. That is why I tabled the Adjournment topic. As Cherisse heartbreakingly tells me on so many occasions, she has met and had conversations with so many families across the North with children just like Callan who are now in their 20s, 30s and 40s and are confined to a bedroom, looking at a screen and unable to be in the working world or to be full members of society because they did not get the support that they needed at that critical time. I am really conscious that Callan is in that position right now. I do not want to see his situation deteriorate because of a lack of services. I want to see something from the Department of Health and the Northern Trust to provide him with the help that he needs and deserves. I will continue to be his voice and will support Cherisse in doing that too.

1,523 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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