Part of 1. 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:50 pm on 27 September 2016.
First Minister, your Government’s record on helping young people with poor mental health is appalling, and that’s without mentioning the children and young people who don’t even make it into the system. The mortality rate for teenagers between 15 and 19 years old is higher in Wales than it is in England, and there has been no reduction in deaths from intentional injury among that age group, between 10 and 18 years old, in three decades. A national case audit of children’s deaths has suggested that many young people who died from suicide had not had any contact at all with mental health services, and, for those who had, there were problems with services failing to follow up on patients who did not turn up for their first appointments. You once admitted, First Minister, that your Government took its eye off the ball when it came to education. Will you now accept that your Government has taken its eye off the ball on children and young people’s mental health? Will you now accept that this is a crisis and will you tell us what, after 17 years of leading the Government here in Wales, you intend to do about this?