Hannah Blythyn: ...of support for veterans across Wales. This year we have seen excellent progress including increased investment in veterans mental health services, funding for veterans to access further and higher education and continued funding of our armed forces liaison officers.
Hannah Blythyn: Can I thank the Member for her question and highlighting some of the excellent work that is happening in schools in her own constituency of the Rhondda, but also right across Wales? I think it's really important to talk about this and also share it so we can support teachers and organisations elsewhere, and my colleague the Minister for Education and the Welsh Language, Jeremy Miles recently...
Hannah Blythyn: ...with Members and organisations when available. This builds on our record of support for the LGBTQ+ community here in Wales, from pushing forward with curriculum reform that embeds LGBTQ+ education, to establishing a gender identity service and becoming the first nation in the UK to offer pre-exposure prophylaxis free in the NHS. During COVID-19 we set up a bespoke LGBTQ+ venue grant and,...
Hannah Blythyn: ...do all we can to support our veterans in Wales. Whilst we might not have responsibility for defence, we absolutely are there to support our veterans in a range of areas from health to housing to education and so on, and their families as well.
Hannah Blythyn: ...providing £120,000 to tackle loneliness and social isolation, funding that has enabled Blesma to establish its brunch and digital inclusion project; championing the Supporting Service Children in Education, SSCE Cymru programme, which, in collaboration with the army in Wales, secured covenant trust funding for four regional school liaison officers; and I was pleased to be able to confirm...
Hannah Blythyn: ...not be tolerated. We're working closely with our local authority partners to look at the work we can do around enforcement, but also the Member raises important points around the role of raising education. She talks about access to facilities. Now, within my statement and within our 'Beyond Recycling' consultation, we've invested £1 billion in the last 20 years in...
Hannah Blythyn: ...of a more generous social wage. This includes cash-equivalent services that enable Welsh citizens to keep much needed money in their pockets. An additional £40 million-worth of funding for free school meals was made available to help families feed their children while schools were closed, and we've allocated an additional £2.85 million for local authorities in Wales to meet increases in...
Hannah Blythyn: Thank you. You're obviously referring to that role that young people are playing, particularly in schools, in driving this change, and the power of pester power as well because I think there's no loyalty to the grown-ups or to the parents when we're not doing it probably. I remember in one school, we were talking about what you recycled and why, and where it went, and one little girl put her...
Hannah Blythyn: ...that doesn't just mean in terms of our own Government approach, in terms of our locations strategy, moving forward, but actually the work we do perhaps through the various health boards, through education, through local authorities, and the work with housing associations, and other bodies too. So, it's something that—the question, to go through the prism of town-centre-first, should be...
Hannah Blythyn: ...resources are under pressure, and tackling empty properties can often be seen, or has been seen, as a 'nice to have' when compared to maintaining key statutory services such as health, social care, education and so on. But it is important to establish the conditions where our delivery partners see the benefit of this work, whether it is through lower instances of complaints around safety,...
Hannah Blythyn: ...talked about that schoolchildren are made aware of the role that people who serve play. I thought it was quite wonderful to see—and I'm sure that other Members will share similar stories about schools taking part now in remembrance services—local secondary schools, and primary schools, even, laying wreaths on behalf of the children. And the field of remembrance in Cardiff...
Hannah Blythyn: ...are being applied where they should be applied as well. In terms of the question on PLASC, I'm working closely with officials across Government, both in the DES department and with the Minister for Education, with regard to actually taking forward that recommendation. We recognise that having that data would be incredibly beneficial in order to support service children in education and...
Hannah Blythyn: ...registered with the site, including people like General Dynamics, the University of South Wales and Pembrokeshire College. Service children with experience of parental deployment can face very real educational challenges. Launched in 2018, the supporting service children in Wales fund has been made available for the 2019/20 academic year. The bespoke fund of £250,000 aims to mitigate the...
Hannah Blythyn: ...tackle the use of single-use plastic within here, within this place, is also reflective and perhaps partially driven by what I hear loud and clear across the country, whether that be from our eco-schools or from our communities who are taking action to become single-use plastic free. There is an enormous amount of commitment and goodwill across the country to drive a change in the amount...
Hannah Blythyn: ...work going on there, and I was really encouraged by what's happening—less so the weather I was greeted with when I got there this morning, but—. I visited them to open the newly redone education centre with a group of local schoolchildren. It was brilliant to see how they'd brought everything to life, with interactive displays, which the children can take part in, which not only cover...
Hannah Blythyn: I thank the Member for the question. I obviously want to start by offering my congratulations to St Teilo’s school for what sounds like an absolutely fantastic initiative, and one that’s to be very rightly applauded and recognised for the work that they’ve been taking. There are so many examples of such enthusiasm and ideas from young people in secondary and primary schools right across...
Hannah Blythyn: .... I've met with many people and communities across the country and have been moved by the commitment, passion and enthusiasm around recycling and tackling waste. Nowhere is this more so than in schools, where from Ferndale to Rhyl, I have heard examples of young people taking action. The Zero Waste Schools initiative being piloted in Pembrokeshire and Cardiff is bringing together the...
Hannah Blythyn: ...dangerous and criminal. They not only put communities at risk, but they put them in that position of fear, which is why the preventative approach is so, so important. We do full collaboration with schools, police and other agencies, but also other programmes such as Crimes and Consequences, and the Phoenix Project works with small groups that are identified as being at risk of offending to...
Hannah Blythyn: ...that the emphasis needs to be on year-round and working in partnership. So, while the fire service are the ones on the front line, so to speak, a lot of support has been placed into prevention, the education programmes within schools and those groups deemed at risk, and that can only be done, like you said, in partnership with other stakeholders, such as Natural Resources Wales, the police...
Hannah Blythyn: ...local community. And we've actually seen through the work we've done and through the committee's evidence that perhaps some people have then gone on to use those transferrable skills, perhaps as school governors and in other roles in the community. So, it's actually how we continue that support, perhaps, in the future, so people want to put themselves forward again. And it's really...
