Caroline Jones: ...the organ donation register. Cabinet Secretary, what is the Welsh Government doing to encourage more people to register as donors? What about parental guidance to young people embarking on leaving school? What is the Government doing to improve education about organ donation? A lot of objections to organ donation are on religious grounds. Is the Welsh Government working with religious...
Caroline Jones: ...of increasing levels of obesity are not unique to Wales. However, it’s truly shocking to learn that nearly 60 per cent of Welsh adults are overweight or obese. Cabinet Secretary, with many schools selling off their playing fields, what assessment has the Welsh Government made of the impact this will have on physical activity rates amongst young people? We have many programmes where we...
Caroline Jones: .... However, if we are to increase the numbers of Welsh speakers, sometimes it’s not strategies or even legislation that we need, important as they both are, but improvements to Welsh language education and access to learning, and we need to give people the confidence in learning our language. I note that you will be refining the guidance on the preparation of Welsh in education strategic...
Caroline Jones: ...spokesman for UKIP, I realise that there are also other competing priorities. We are facing a crisis in social care, given cuts to local authority budgets in recent times. We have a shortfall in education spending in Wales. We need major infrastructure upgrades and investment. And we need to spend more on improving mental health outcomes. An additional £432 million will go a long way to...
Caroline Jones: ...doing to raise awareness about the harms associated with new psychoactive substances among the public? Your delivery plans involve training for staff, and, whilst this is welcome, we need to educate the public if we are to reverse the increasing use of NPS and its associated harms. We also need to work with the Ministry of Justice to tackle the influx of NPS in our prisons and ensure that...
Caroline Jones: When I first entered teacher training college, the education landscape was very different to that we see today. The academically inclined did go to grammar schools, but those who were more suited to a vocation went to a secondary modern school. State grammar schools were educating hundreds of thousands of pupils, offering a free education comparable to that of fee-paying schools....
Caroline Jones: No, sorry, Llyr, I won’t. The demand for grammar schools in those few pockets where they still exist has skyrocketed. So, we are not looking at what people want again, we’re looking at imposing something that they may not want. Unfortunately, those grammar schools only exist in the wealthier parts of southern England and, together with rising house prices, this has seen fewer and fewer...
Caroline Jones: In comprehensive schools?
Caroline Jones: I totally disagree with you on that point. I think that smaller class sizes and smaller schools—you help the most vulnerable in those schools, but you lose them in the comprehensive system. Thank you.
Caroline Jones: First Minister, cuts in local authority budgets have put pressure on school budgets throughout my region. In addition to school budgets, Swansea council have also increased the amount they charge for service level agreements, which is impacting upon schools’ ability to deliver things like music lessons, swimming lessons and the supply of library books. Swansea now has one of the lowest per...
Caroline Jones: ...needs to change the ring-fencing arrangements as a matter of priority. I would like to thank Plaid Cymru for giving us this opportunity to hold this debate. I welcome and support their call to educate young people about mental health issues. However, we cannot support the devolution of employment law and will therefore be supporting the Welsh Conservative amendment. Thank you.
Caroline Jones: First Minister, with nearly 2,000 deaths in Wales each year, many of them preventable, sepsis is one of the biggest killers most people aren’t aware of. While educating the public to recognise the signs, and ensuring steps are taken in the NHS to prevent the onset of sepsis are vital, so too is ensuring that our healthcare professionals recognise the signs. Many sepsis survivors owe their...
Caroline Jones: 9. What action is the Welsh Government taking to improve the educational outcomes for young people with additional learning needs? OAQ(5)0053(EDU)
Caroline Jones: ...with additional learning needs has been waiting over seven months for an appointment with the child and adolescent mental health services, and in the interim has been receiving just a few hours of schooling each week. How can we expect young people like my constituent to reach their full potential if we are denying them a full and rich education? Minister, what steps are you taking to...
Caroline Jones: ...26 and 28 per cent; it fluctuates across the region—and while the levels are reducing, we are not making progress fast enough. Obviously, with child poverty comes inequality in so many ways—in education, less pursuit of recreational activities due to lower finances, stunting, therefore, the emotional growth and well-being of the child. A poor diet also doesn’t enable children’s...
Caroline Jones: ...over 60 per cent of its 15 to 18-year-olds entering the prison with a drug-related issue. It was also highlighted that many of these teenagers will have spent time in the care system, truanted from school, or suffered with learning difficulties and/or mental health issues. With these indictors of vulnerability already highlighted, why is it that they were not supported sufficiently prior...
Caroline Jones: ...to your child poverty strategy for my region over the next three years, because poverty is blighting the opportunities of these children, who are more likely to suffer poor health, do less well at school and have poor employment prospects in the future?
Caroline Jones: ...that antipsychotics are only used when strictly necessary? I welcome the fact that the strategy highlights that dementia can strike at any age and the role that alcohol can play. We need to better educate the public about the risks of alcohol-related dementia and brain damage. Cabinet Secretary, what plans do you have to increase public awareness about the fact that alcohol misuse can lead...
Caroline Jones: ...a sensitive way because people react differently, and we don’t want people to look at the size zero in a magazine and think that that is the way that they have to go. So, it has to be a case of educating people in a sensible way. We must resist the urge to try to solve the obesity crisis by introducing legislation. A sugar tax is not going to magically stop people from drinking sugary...
Caroline Jones: First Minister, the Welsh Language Commissioner said that, in order to increase the number of Welsh speakers, we need radical change to our education system. She has suggested we should consider teaching all primary schools through the medium of Welsh. It has been compulsory for every schoolchild in Wales to learn Welsh since 1999. Yet, despite this, the numbers of Welsh speakers has fallen....
