Huw Irranca-Davies: I hope, therefore, that you will agree that we have made significant progress in terms of improving outcomes for children in Wales. I am looking forward to attending the improving outcomes for children national event on Thursday, where there will be an opportunity to share learning, to share innovative approaches and to recognise successes. But, most importantly, it'll be an opportunity to...
Huw Irranca-Davies: The ministerial advisory group has representation from all senior leaders and organisations with an involvement in children’s services. The group has been instrumental in advising me on, and co-producing, the improving outcomes for children work programme, and I'm pleased our partners are actively involved in this work. In fact, I attended the last ministerial advisory group meeting, and I...
Huw Irranca-Davies: Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I'm grateful for this opportunity to update Members on the collaborative approach we are taking to improve outcomes for looked-after children in Wales.
Huw Irranca-Davies: 'Taking Wales Forward', Deputy Presiding Officer, sets out this Government’s commitment to ‘examine ways of ensuring looked after children enjoy the same life chances as other children and if necessary reform the way they are looked after’. Our national strategy, 'Prosperity for All', also describes our priorities around supporting children and families at the edge of care and young...
Huw Irranca-Davies: Rhianon, yes, thank you very much. And, again, thank you for your support for this area and for championing adoption as well. And certainly the south-east is driving forward. There are other examples, I have to say, in other parts of Wales as well, but what we've done in the south-east area, particularly with access to clinical psychology, has been groundbreaking and one of the things that...
Huw Irranca-Davies: Just to raise to Assembly Members' understanding, we have a couple of pieces of consultation currently live in the field of adoption legislation, and they're to do with actually speeding up the process. There's the first, which covers the new regulations required, which flow on from the risk regulations. And the second covers the proposed introduction of the two-stage system for assessing and...
Huw Irranca-Davies: Thank you very much, Michelle. If I can start with the first point that you raised there, after your welcome for this celebration this week and promotion of adoption, you laid down the challenge about what the results we were having are. I touched on some of them in my opening remarks, but I'm happy to clarify: more than 300 children were placed last year in a new adoptive home; approximately...
Huw Irranca-Davies: Dai, thank you very much, and on that very important point, I think this is why, curiously, the work in the adoption sector doesn't stand totally isolated from the wider issue of looked-after children and improving outcomes for all children. I think, in all of that wide piste of work, of paramount importance and statutorily underpinned, as well, by our belief in the rights of the child, is...
Huw Irranca-Davies: Thank you, Janet, and thanks for your encouragement as well of families who might want to come forward. We want more families to come forward, and families come in all shapes and sizes, as well. But we want more families to come forward, because we've had around 300 children, over the last year, go through into the adoption process; we know that we currently have around 350 who are going...
Huw Irranca-Davies: Becoming a parent is a significant commitment and the start of an emotional journey that brings great rewards. But you will know as well as I that being a parent is not always simple and that challenges can and do arise. And, at these times of challenge, we may need support that enables us to continue to provide a loving, stable home environment—a home that enables our children to thrive....
Huw Irranca-Davies: Diolch, Llywydd. I'm very pleased to be able to celebrate National Adoption Week with you and to recognise and to pay tribute to all of those caring individuals who are willing to put themselves forward to become adoptive parents and also to those who provide support to them on their journey.
Huw Irranca-Davies: Unfortunately, in a statement, I can't. But I think you'll continue to make your case for a focus on home, and I'll continue to make the case for, 'We should do these good things at home and overseas as well.' But let me pick up on some of the points where I think we had real agreement there. You mentioned about the transformation—how do we take these good examples like the Prince Philip? I...
Huw Irranca-Davies: David, thank you very much, and I was with you all the way—all the way, all the way—until that final paragraph. [Laughter.] And I would simply say that the difference between us is that, for me, social justice and providing people with good lives for them, for their families, for their loved ones doesn’t begin and end at home; it travels internationally. I popped into a lunchtime event...
Huw Irranca-Davies: Thank you. I think as the invitation has been laid down well in advance, I don't think I've got any excuse for failing to attend now. Jayne, thank you very much for that, and I think it does show that we all actually have a role here to play locally in the events that we attend and the events that we organise in the way that we actually celebrate the lives of older people, and the...
Huw Irranca-Davies: Diolch, Dai. It's interesting that one of the aspects you mentioned there was the talk around a national care service or a national care system. It seems in some ways to be very much the flavour of the moment here, talking about how we take forward an approach to care that builds on the approach that we've done back in the post-war years around the health service. It's quite interesting. Of...
Huw Irranca-Davies: My apologies. I didn't expect to be on my feet quite so rapidly, but I'm happy to be. Janet, can I thank you very much for that contribution, and welcome your role as well as your party's champion for older people? You rightly emphasise once again the role of older people as an asset in our society, in their volunteering, their provision of care themselves, as carers, including, of course, in...
Huw Irranca-Davies: Celebrating older people’s day can encourage people of all ages to look forward with positivity and to embrace growing older. My aim is to make Wales the best place in the world to grow old, and I look forward to working with key stakeholders, the older people’s commissioner and, most importantly, older people themselves, to realise this aim. Thank you very much.
Huw Irranca-Davies: Thank you, Presiding Officer. Yesterday was the International Day of Older Persons, and communities across Wales joined together to recognise and celebrate the many and varied contributions that older people make to society and the Welsh economy.
Huw Irranca-Davies: As, this year, the celebration aligns with the seventieth anniversary of the universal declaration of human rights, I would like to take this opportunity to update Assembly Members on the work that Welsh Government is taking forward to place human rights at the heart of Welsh public services, and to make Wales the best place in the world to grow old. Growing older should not erode an...
Huw Irranca-Davies: Indeed. I agree entirely. Can I commend the work of the new merged organisation—I'm sure it will do very good work in campaigning and policy development as well—but also, Dr Jeremy Camilleri, who will be moving on at some time in the near future? He's made his intentions clear, but it would be worth saying that, because of the advance notice that we have had, the health board is going to...
