Gareth Davies: ...more must be done to support our unpaid carers? What plans does the Welsh Government have to offer training courses to unpaid carers in Wales? Have you discussed with Social Care Wales and Health Education and Improvement Wales the ways in which unpaid carers can train alongside paid carers? And finally, Deputy Minister, how are you working with Welsh local authorities to ensure that they...
Gareth Davies: Will the Minister provide an update on the provision of medical education in north Wales? Transferred for written answer by the Minister for Health and Social Services.
Gareth Davies: Good afternoon, Minister. One of the most devastating impacts of the pandemic—of course, aside from the tragic loss of life—has been the damage done to the educational and emotional development of our schoolchildren. In my constituency, the Vale of Clwyd, we have seen entire schools close as a result of a few cases of COVID-19, often at times as a result of asymptomatic transmission...
Gareth Davies: ...said that they did not know where the nearest defibrillator was. Two years later, they have finally introduced funding for Save a Life Cymru. This funding is helping to develop a programme to educate people on how to help someone suffering a cardiac arrest, and also to help people gain confidence in using a defibrillator. Although this funding and scheme are welcome, we simply need to do...
Gareth Davies: Diolch, Commissioner. The fact that we're still operating in the Chamber at half capacity, I believe, is nonsensical. We expect our children to go to school and rightly so because it's harmful to keep taking them out. Thanks to a terrific vaccine programme, we have severely impacted the virus's ability to cause serious illness and death. We are all fully vaccinated, so what's the risk? We can...
Gareth Davies: ...hours for vital healthcare treatment. As a former employee of Llandudno hospital, I've seen that first hand on the front line in the NHS. Laura Anne Jones mentioned some of the wider impacts on education, as Peter Fox rightly brought up in yesterday's Plenary. And, as I mentioned, Altaf mentioned some on-site diagnostics and training and some of the COVID-19 consequentials that we've seen...
Gareth Davies: ...Siân Gwenllian for bringing this topic to the Minister's attention this afternoon, because I want to focus on my constituency in the Vale of Clwyd in Denbighshire, where even today we've had a school closure due to COVID cases, causing big disruption to children's education. I'm just wondering—. Well, sorry, I want to focus on rural areas and what contingencies the Welsh Government have...
Gareth Davies: I would like to put on record my thanks to the teaching profession for their efforts to maintain education standards during this most challenging of periods. Sadly, teachers and school staff have had one hand tied behind their backs during this pandemic. Despite the Welsh Government's lack of leadership during the COVID-19 outbreak, educational standards haven't suffered the decline that many...
Gareth Davies: 3. How will the twenty-first century schools programme benefit pupils in the Vale of Clwyd? OQ57141
Gareth Davies: I'm very grateful for that response, Minister. However, the benefit of the twenty-first century schools programme is very much dependent on where you live—a postcode lottery, essentially. Pupils in Rhyl have benefited from the building of two excellent, modern schools, in Rhyl High School and the Christ the Word Catholic School, both in the same town, whereas the neighbouring town of...
Gareth Davies: ...this afternoon. Whilst I welcome actions taken to improve oracy rates across the board, I do have concerns about those in the care system as well as those providing care. Minister, we know that educational attainment amongst young people in care is well below that of their peers. What assessment has the Welsh Government made of oracy rates for those in the care system? Has the pandemic had...
Gareth Davies: ...made to improve the number of Welsh speakers entering healthcare through schemes such as Tomorrow's Doctors. Tomorrow's Doctors, a joint venture between Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol and the medical schools at Cardiff and Swansea, has, according to the commissioner's report, seen record numbers of Welsh-speaking students begin their medical training. However, it's one thing to train the...
Gareth Davies: ...have been at best ignored and at worst eroded. Children and young people have suffered the most, yet they are unlikely to suffer serious illnesses from COVID. At the start of the COVID outbreak, schools were closed to help stop the spread of the virus. No regard was given to the impact this had on children. Welsh Government failed to conduct rights assessments on any of its COVID...
Gareth Davies: Minister, my constituency is home to one of the most deprived communities in Wales and maybe even in the whole of the UK. Sadly, poverty is so often linked to poor educational achievement, and it can be a really vicious cycle, with children of poorly educated parents less likely to achieve a good education. As the Estyn report highlights, this will have been exacerbated by the pandemic, as...
Gareth Davies: ...still have some huge concerns, which I hope the Minister can address, and bring back a revised code that all in this Chamber can support. The guiding principle of the relationships and sexuality education code, at least according to the Act, is that RSE lessons must be developmentally appropriate for learners. I am concerned that this code fails to adequately demonstrate how this can and...
Gareth Davies: ...support is being offered for care home residents over this Christmas period to ensure that residents are still being able to be seen by families? If I may, at the end, I just want to touch on education briefly in schools, in asking whether schools will be able to reopen in January, given the pressures at the moment. I think it's 10 January that they're due back. Can you give any assurances...
Gareth Davies: ...debate this afternoon, and I've got no problem supporting the motion as it stands this afternoon. According to the World Health Organization, there is ample evidence that social factors such as education, employment status, income level and gender and ethnicity have a marked influence on how healthy a person is. In all countries, whether low, middle or high income, there are wide...
Gareth Davies: .... You would be hard pressed to find anyone who can honestly say that the past two years haven't impacted their mental well-being. How many children will never recover from the damage done to their education and development due to school closures? How many families have been forced into poverty because restrictions have forced businesses to cease trading? How many generations will be forced...
Gareth Davies: What steps is the Welsh Government taking to ensure there are no disruptions to education provision due to COVID-19 during the current academic year?
Gareth Davies: ...debate this afternoon. As a parent, I'm fully aware of the impact the pandemic has had on younger generations, but thankfully my son is young enough not to have suffered any major detriment to his education. But, older children and young people aren't that lucky. As parents, we always worry about our children's future, but the pandemic has compounded that worry exponentially. Despite the...
