Reconfiguring Children’s Services

As part of Transforming Lives, the Health Service Executive’s (HSE) Progressing Disability Services for Children and Young People programme has reconfigured children’s disability services into Children’s Disability Network Teams which provide services based on children’s needs rather than diagnosis and provide services based on where children with disabilities live.

The programme is based on the recommendations of the 2009 Report of the Reference Group on Multi-disciplinary Services for Children aged 5-18 Years. The aim of the Progressing Disability Services programme was to reconfigure of children’s disability services to deliver equitable, family-centred services for children and young people with complex disabilities in every part of Ireland. This reconfiguration is now complete and a Children’s Disability Network Team (CDNT) Service Model is in place.

Review of CDNT Service Model

The NDA has been commissioned by the HSE to conduct a review of the Children’s Disability Network Team (CDNT) Service Model. This is action 2.17 in the Roadmap for Service Improvement 2023-2026.

The review consists of Three Parts

  • Part 1: a review of the CDNT service model
  • Part 2: a project to determine the optimal staffing for CDNTs
  • Part 3: a review of the National Therapy Service in Education Pilot

In the below links you will find the documents associated with the review.

Surveys for part 1

Surveys for staff, managers and parents and children will be available here shortly.

You can read more about the review and what is involved in taking part in the Participation Information Leaflet.

We are currently developing the methods for Parts 2 and 3.


Literature reviews

To inform the review we are conducting a number of literature reviews. Three have been completed and can be viewed below.

The aim of this literature review was to examine the international literature for guidelines or best practice recommendations for determining appropriate caseloads or workloads for interdisciplinary teams that deliver children’s disability services.

Read the literature review

The aim of this review is to explore the level of intervention or therapy received by children with disabilities and identify current practices and theoretical frameworks used by therapists and interdisciplinary teams.

Read the literature review

The aim of this research was to review referral prioritisation tools and techniques in community-based health and social care services.

Read the literature review

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