To ask the Minister of Health why Health and Social Care Trusts have yet to fully reinstate respite and day centre provision for people with disabilities; and what action he is taking to ensure the resumption of full provision of services for people with disabilities.

In February 2022, the Chief Social Work Officer wrote to Trusts to outline my decision to remobilise respite services. To date, significant efforts have been made by Trusts to implement the Public Health Agency Pathway to manage risk, while increasing service provision on a phased basis, throughout a period of high community prevalence of Covid-19.

The latest position reported by Trusts shows that the majority have increased availability in adult day care to at least 70% of pre-pandemic capacity. However, this has not been reflected in the volume of attendances as a number of service users have been unable to attend due to health protection guidance that outlines that close contacts should not attend a Health & Social Care setting for a period of 10 days.

Short Breaks provision across statutory health & social care settings has significantly increased. However, overall capacity has reduced as a number of respite beds available in care homes have been withdrawn by independent sector providers.

Transport continues to be provided on a reduced basis as there is limited scope to increase capacity while adhering to 1m physical distancing guidelines, aligned to recommendations by the World Health Organisation.

While it is clear that the Pathway has been an enabler to remobilise services, there remains further adjustments to public health guidance required before services can be fully restore to pre-pandemic levels. Therefore, my officials have written to the PHA asking them to commence an urgent formal review of the Pathway and associated health protection guidelines.

Aligned to this process, the Department has requested performance and capacity data across all Trusts, which will be published on the Department’s website in June 2022. I have clearly outlined that this data will be collected and published on a regular basis to monitor remobilisation against rebuild timeframes. Furthermore, I will commit to issuing a periodic communication to all MLAs to outline progress made by the Trusts.

It is regrettable that services have yet to be fully restored to pre-pandemic capacity and I sincerely apologise to those families that continue to receive a partial service.