P-05-817 Specialist prosthetics for child amputees – Petitioner to Committee, 22.10.19

I thank the petitions committee for enquiring as to the progress of the petition. It was disapointing to note that the Minister does not appear to have shared the documents requested by the committee, and that there appears to have been little progress made since the committee last met.  Hopefully the committee's continued interest and enquiries after the matter will prompt the Minister to make an announcement in the near future.

Not having seen the costed business plan I obviously have no idea of how the scheme's implementation or timeline; but I would like to add at this point that if the scheme were funded, one would hope for an immediate roll-out across the whole of Wales.

Having been personally negatively impacted by the phased 'roll out' of projects and the 'postcode lottery' nature of some early years care and education services in the past, I firmly believe that the only criteria for accessing the service should be the decision made by the patient's clinical team, and not where they happen to live or by which limb centre they attend.  I feel strongly that piloting the scheme with a single limb centre would cause further delay in all child amputees being able to access the support they need. There are only three limb centres in Wales, and I believe that the number of child amputees are small enough to warrant offering them all specialist protheses without the need for trials or pilot projects.   Should the Minister's decision be to grant the funding, one would hope that the funding would be released as soon as the limb centres indicate that they have the capacity to begin providing an enhanced specialist service.

Diolch yn fawr.