5. Will the Minister outline the Welsh Government’s priorities in tackling child poverty in South Wales West? OAQ(5)0021(CC)

I thank the Member for Aberavon. The 2015 child poverty strategy sets out our priorities for tackling child poverty across Wales. They include a focus on early years and increasing employability. I am also exploring opportunities to address adverse childhood experiences, reducing their impact on children’s life chances.

Thank you for that answer, Cabinet Secretary. As you will be aware, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation last week published its report, ‘We Can Solve Poverty in the UK’, which highlighted five points. One of those was strengthening families and communities, which comes under your remit. They also include four recommendations. In my constituency of Aberavon, many families are struggling and facing difficult challenges ahead of them. What actions are the Welsh Government taking to ensure that these families are able to benefit from the strengthened family support, such as Families First? Will you guarantee that Families First funding will continue beyond the current stage?

The Member is right to raise these issues for his constituency and many others across Wales. Families First and Flying Start are two very important parts of our tackling poverty and family support programmes. I am seeking to continue those into the future.

Minister, what is your assessment of the recent changes to Jobs Growth Wales and how do you hope to reduce the number of families where no-one is in employment in order to tackle child poverty?

I think we’ve had great success with Jobs Growth Wales and our manifesto commitment to improve and increase to 100,000 apprenticeships across Wales of any age is something that I’m sure the Member would support. There are many things, as the Member recognises, that have an effect on community resilience and family resilience: education, jobs and skills and well-being all being part of that. As I said to the previous Member previously, I will be making a statement later next week about our community vision, about what that programme support should be and how we can develop that for the future.

Confidence and appropriate skills to help people join the workforce, of course, are key to tackling child poverty, and it’s important that children grow up in an environment that values their talents and their aptitudes and that helps them to develop those in order to expand their own horizons. But the adults in the lives of some of these children themselves may need some help to help create that environment. I appreciate that there will be some crossover with one of your colleagues here, but community-based learning is a very important part of helping adults to create that environment. Would you agree with me that some of the courses that are offered in the community could contain elements, such as how to manage budgets and how to set up and market businesses and developing Welsh-language skills, not just as separate subjects, but as part of those basic skills training that you tend to get in community-based learning courses?

I think the Member’s right and what we have to do and what we have done in many areas around the Families First programme is look at the wraparound provision of the family—not just children, but parents and guardians—and about what are its actual needs. I’ve recently been criticised about some action I’d taken on Families First regarding some of the more direct work about how we support families, where we’ve removed some of the financial investment around that and the knowledge base. What I’m very keen to assure Members of is that my priority is about making sure that we have a support mechanism around the family, and whatever the problems are, we can signpost and support them to move on to the next—. It’s about preventative exposure rather than responding to a family or a person who’s in crisis later on in the day.

Cabinet Secretary, Aberavon has some of the highest levels of child poverty in Wales. In one ward, nearly 46 per cent of children are living in poverty. The ‘State of the Nation’ annual report by the UK’s Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission was critical of the Welsh Government’s policies, stating that they were not having the right level of impact. Given the Welsh Government’s commitment to eradicate child poverty by 2020, what changes are you proposing to tackle child poverty in my region over the next three years? Diolch.

The numbers that the Member raised there are troubling to me, too, but they are very fortunate in that they have got a fantastic Assembly Member in Dai Rees in the Aberavon area. He raises these issues with me on a regular basis, and I’m committed to ensuring that we tackle the issues that the Member raised and which are raised in the report. Indeed, I will be coming to the Chamber to issue a statement to Members in order for the Member and others to understand exactly what Welsh Government is doing and what interventions we will be bringing forward.