Angela Burns: Following on from that, Cabinet Secretary, of course you will be aware of various stories at the beginning of school term of children being punished for not having the correct school uniform. I absolutely buy into the notion that we want all the children to look the same, and it's very important for school discipline and school morale, and so on. But one of the concerns I have is this view...
Angela Burns: ...to 10 per cent. It is clear that one of the barriers to meeting these targets is poor workforce planning for the diagnostic roles. What assurances can you provide that the newly created Health Education and Improvement Wales will focus on more effective workforce planning? And as your tenure as First Minister nears to its end, can I ask one final time: when does your Government aim to...
Angela Burns: I do welcome the expansion of medical school places, although I do regret that you didn't choose to announce that expansion here when this has been a topic that has exercised so many of us on so many occasions. We do have a shortage of doctors, as you're well aware, in certain disciplines such as general practice, paediatrics and rheumatology. Are you able, through these places, to seek to...
Angela Burns: ...services, children and adolescent mental health, child obesity, attendance and behaviour, adoption, advocacy services for children, placement of kids in care, youth justice, not in employment or education, autism in further education, dyslexia, post 19 with additional learning needs, mental health services: 15 committee reports by three different committees, each and every one of them...
Angela Burns: .... Michael Marmot's 'Fair Society, Healthy Lives' really highlighted the significance of the wider issues that impact on health. In fact, they say often, don't they, that housing, employment and education are the causes of the causes of ill health. So, I think anything that Welsh Government, with the support of the Assembly, can do to tackle some of these issues is incredibly important. ...
Angela Burns: ..., and I know that Bethan has made some very, very good points. When I was a very new Assembly Member, I went to meet a young carer in Pembroke Dock, and she had just received a detention from school. I think, at that time, she was about 13 and a half or 14. She hadn't been able to put her homework in on time. When I arrived at her home, I was shocked to find that she looked after her very,...
Angela Burns: .... In the years that I have been here as an Assembly Member, I had the pleasure of chairing the Finance Committee for a term. I've also sat on some of the very heavy-duty policy committees, namely education and health. And time and time and time and time and time again, I have found policies where there has been precious poor monitoring, very little measurement, very little real analysis of...
Angela Burns: ...light on workforce issues: how we develop our workforce from carer to consultant, how we value them, how we train them, and how we give them parity of esteem. The vision mentions in passing Health Education and Improvement Wales, but can you give us more detail, given that staff and the re-energising and the respect, evaluation and involvement of staff were such a key part of the...
Angela Burns: ...the UK Sepsis Trust are already engaged with and see if any are suitable for Wales? And, finally, Cabinet Secretary, with one voice, we all ask for a properly funded public information campaign in schools, in mother and toddler groups, in care homes, doctors surgeries, anywhere and everywhere, because we all need to ask, 'Could it be sepsis?'
Angela Burns: ...pay, which will certainly help us to promote our equality and fairness agendas. Along with yesterday's announcement, you will know that the UK Government are going to establish five new medical schools in parts of the country. England is not alone in facing these recruitment challenges, and what they're doing will really help to make their health service more resilient. In Wales we spend...
Angela Burns: Earlier this month, your Cabinet Secretary for Education announced a £14 million injection of cash to help fund school repairs. This is a very welcome sum of money, and her statement very clearly said that every school will receive some funding. Now, throughout Wales, we have a number of new builds, either built this year or literally in the last sort of 18 months to two years. In my own...
Angela Burns: 9. Will the First Minister provide details of the allocation of funding for education in Wales? OAQ51959
Angela Burns: ...did make a couple of comments during that debate that I would just like to pick up on. I was saying that spotting signs of mental ill health is incredibly important, both in the workplace and in schools—wherever it might be—and that all of us have a role to play in actually being able to get alongside somebody to spot the fact that they may be going into some kind of crisis, and then...
Angela Burns: ...that the cost of poor mental health in the workplace amounts to £12 billion a year, nearly £860 for every employee in Wales. Cabinet Secretary, this begs the question as to what can be done to educate all of us on how we can spot the signs of poor mental health much earlier.
Angela Burns: ...to BT and to Openreach. They cannot make promises to people and then just basically say, 'Tough luck. It's finished. Too bad', because these people have lives to live, businesses to run, kids to educate. Broadband, superfast, is today's universal provision we all need, and I fail to see why my constituency should be so disadvantaged.
Angela Burns: ...needs Bill yesterday, and noted with interest the statement you issued earlier this week on implementing the new code. However, I would like clarity on the advice that you are providing to local education authorities as to the interim measures that are in place now that the Bill has been passed. I've raised this issue before with previous education Secretaries, because it seems that there...
Angela Burns: ...and that level of improvement is not there. I would lay against the Welsh Government that, actually, you have this problem throughout the whole of your public service delivery, because we have seen education, we have seen councils, being put into special measures, under ministerial advisory review boards, under targeted interventions, and I do not think there's a coherence as to what...
Angela Burns: ...a parent, very often a woman with children, has to go into hiding, rather than just leave them in shelters, they actually take them, put them in a home and then help them to build a new life, new schools, new permanency, put down new roots in a place of safety. Will you undertake on behalf of your Government to look at what places like Italy and Germany do, to see if we can actually bring...
Angela Burns: ...look at as to why people drink, and a lot of it is to do with co-dependency. You say in your statement that you’re very keen to tackle the whole area of getting our young people to be better educated, not to become addicted to alcohol. It isn’t just our young people. I was speaking to a mother only a few days ago who said that her young 15-year-old daughter went to a party where the...
Angela Burns: .... Actually, it was the response to recommendation 2, Cabinet Secretary—but it does speak to all of these recommendations—when you said that admission criteria is ultimately a matter for medical schools, and elsewhere there’s a marginal implication that there’s not an awful lot that the Welsh Government can do because these medical schools are universities within their own right. I...
