The next item on our agenda is a statement by the Cabinet Secretary for Communities and Children on resilient communities, and I call on Carl Sargeant.

Thank you, Presiding Officer. This Government is determined to deliver more and better jobs through a stronger, fairer economy. We are committed to improving and reforming our public services and we are intent on building a united, connected and sustainable Wales. Within my portfolio, my priorities are well-being and economic prosperity. I’m absolutely determined to meet them. To do that, I firmly believe it’s time for a new approach to build resilient communities.

For 15 years, Communities First has supported people in some of our more deprived areas. Over that time, the programme has evolved and changed, and in recent years has sharpened its focus on employability, working alongside Lift, and now our Communities for Work and Parents Childcare and Employment programmes. This is vital because, over those 15 years, our economy and society have faced unparalleled change and challenge. In recent years, families and communities have been left reeling from the impact of welfare reform and changes in employment. The bedroom tax and zero-hours contracts were not even thought of when Communities First was launched. In the coming years, we must also navigate our way through the implications of Brexit. It is clear that no single programme can protect communities from changes of this magnitude. Communities First has had a dedicated workforce and I extend my thanks to them for making a real difference to thousands of people. That said, I am not convinced that continuing to focus on 52 small areas is the most effective way to deliver this for Wales.

I am minded to phase out the Communities First programme while establishing a new approach to meet the challenges of the future. Every part of the Welsh Government has a role to play in creating a more prosperous nation of resilient communities. That is why, working together across portfolios, we are investing in the prosperity of our nation: creating 100,000 all-age apprenticeships; piloting a Better Jobs, Closer to Home project, designed to create employment and training hubs in areas of high economic deprivation; delivering the most generous childcare offer for working parents anywhere in the UK, and establishing a ministerial taskforce to develop a fresh approach to improving prosperity in the south Wales Valleys; creating the north Wales and south Wales metros; ensuring every child gets the best start in life through an extended pupil deprivation grant; and, carrying out the work on financial inclusion, including support for advice services, credit unions and promotion of financial literacy.

It is in this context that we will look afresh in coming months at how the Welsh Government can support resilient communities. And this means communities that are empowered and engaged, communities that are ready and able to work and communities that can offer children the best start in life—safe and strong communities that we are all signed up to. Our new approach will need to reflect the continuing effects of austerity. Clearly, there are difficult decisions to make. I want, therefore, to focus on three key areas going forward: employment, early years, and empowerment.

On employment, I want to see resilient communities that have access to jobs and people with the right skills to fill them. Employment offers the best, most sustainable way of escaping poverty, and is fundamental to the new approach to communities. We have made a major commitment to Lift and Communities for Work, and I can confirm today that these important elements of the programmes will continue as planned. Across Government, we are ensuring prosperity for all. The creation of a generous childcare offer for working parents will help to remove one of the major barriers to employment, as well as providing long-term benefits for our children. For early years, more resilient communities prevent and protect children from the impact of adverse childhood experiences or ACEs. ACEs are a major threat to well-being and economic prosperity. Tackling ACEs requires us to be smarter about earlier intervention in the lives of our very youngest members of society.

Llywydd, I don’t underestimate the challenges of doing this, but if we want to break the cycle, we must shift resources into prevention and protection. We can do more in our communities to protect against the damage caused by ACEs, and today, I’m inviting organisations to join with us to develop children’s zones for Wales, collaborating seamlessly to improve children’s and young people’s outcomes. This, along with the continuation of Flying Start and Families First, will support disadvantaged children to get the best possible start in life.

In terms of empowerment, I want resilient communities to have strong local infrastructure and strong and inclusive leadership. Public service boards, established by the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) 2015 Act, offer a vital means of achieving this. Local authorities also have a key role to play in finding ways to improve local communities’ well-being, embedding integrated, collaborative, long-term and preventative approaches, while reflecting the full diversity of the communities that they serve.  Local authorities and PSBs must now step into the leadership role. I will engage, challenge and support them to deliver success.  I will offer those local authorities that lead the way, supported by their PSBs in developing a more integrated and empowering approach, the opportunity to pilot greater financial freedom and flexibilities across programmes. This approach will build on the work of the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government to reform local government, ensuring greater participation in civil society and democracy.

I also expect empowered communities to have integrated and responsive public services. That is why we are committed to strengthening community provision of health and social care, where possible, moving these away from hospitals into communities. Schools and colleges also play a vital role, so we will pilot a new model of community learning centres, extending community access to services, including childcare, parenting support and family learning. We will promote the co-location and integration of services, building on successful models developed across Wales and beyond.

Resilient communities are empowered with a strong voice in the decisions that affect their everyday lives. We will develop a made-in-Wales approach to community assets. We will introduce measures to prevent unnecessary closure, and help communities take ownership of community assets, where appropriate. Implicit within this, and, indeed, throughout our new approach to communities, is an important role for the third sector.

The Deputy Presiding Officer (Ann Jones) took the Chair.

Change is never easy, and we cannot duck the new and serious challenges that we face. Rather, we must find a fresh way to respond. Beginning now, we will engage internal and external stakeholders on our future approach, including the proposal to phase out Communities First, and how we will continue to deliver Communities for Work and Lift. We will seek views on how we engage, support and strengthen communities through our new approach, centred on further increasing the resilience of communities, to promote opportunities for all. I expect to make a further statement in the new year.

I note the Cabinet Secretary’s statement, and I think that it’s important for us to say, as a party, that the flagship programme that you’re announcing the review and the phasing out of today has come under much scrutiny over the years here in the National Assembly. In fact, we’ve probably had review after review, from the Public Accounts Committee, the communities committee, and so forth, looking at how we can sustain and support our communities.

Yet, I would like to ask a question of the Cabinet Secretary. I’ve read the last part of the statement a few times, and you say that you will develop a made-in-Wales approach to community assets, and of the third sector having much involvement. But I genuinely thought that that’s what Communities First was set out to do, and I thought that we were going to be transforming communities, so that they could, by now, after many years of devolution, be empowered in the way that you have said in the statement. So, I’d like to understand, if Communities First is to be phased out, what will be your vision for difference in the future? Will it be another big scheme, such as Communities First, or will it be smaller, potentially more fragmented schemes, because that is why, was it not, that we did streamline Communities First, so that we could try, potentially, to understand why some of the schemes weren’t working and why some of them were, in fact, working in our communities? So, I’d like to hear a bit more about that.

I don’t disagree about the legacy of poverty that’s been largely caused by deindustrialisation—considerable problems that still remain with us. But, I need to understand how you are now going to answer those particular challenges. My personal view, having been here for many years now, is that we are very good at looking to treat symptoms and not the causes of poverty. And so we need to get to grips with that. If Communities First was not set up to eradicate poverty in our communities, we need to look around for fresh ideas, but then recognise that, potentially, in many areas, it has not been the success that you and other party members have claimed it to be over the many years of this institution being in existence.

On employment, we have the programmes outlined in the statement, but will this actually go hand in hand with economic development? How will you be working with your colleague in that area? Will you be working more closely with your ministerial colleagues to ensure that there are more jobs for people to go into? I would also ask how childcare will be protected when Families First, which provides a lot of these schemes across my region, and elsewhere, is also under review at present.

Also—probably like some other people here—I don’t actually know what children’s zones are, so that would be good to try and find out what they are. Because we do have quite a lot of schemes in that area. So, why did you choose to do it in the communities sense, and not through the education system?

Obviously, my passion is to do with financial inclusion, so I’d like to understand from you, Cabinet Secretary, how you’ll be going about introducing the action plan for the refresh of the financial inclusion strategy, which I and others put a lot of time into in the previous Assembly. Again, I believe that this is a key life skill and if we can get people out of poverty by making them have the skills to leave schools, to leave with those tools already, within the system, then we will, I think, be able to tackle some of the core elements of poverty.

The thing I’d like to finish on was to do with the empowerment part and the public service boards. Do you see that as the main area as to where this empowerment will arise from? Are you looking at other countries and other ways of working, so that communities can truly take part in discussion in Wales? Because I think I’ve stood up, as have many Members from your own side, when we’ve talked about community asset transfer and when we’ve talked about volunteers taking over services in their communities. We need to understand how they will be able to do that without actually having the resource available that somehow may or may not be envisaged from your statement today.

So, we will be keeping a close eye on what is happening here. We’re not dismissing the review, but we need to understand why you have come to that particular decision, especially when you’ve launched the new taskforce—sorry, not you, but your colleague Alun Davies—for the Valleys, and how that will all integrate together, because what we don’t want here today is more silos and more Ministers working against one another, not in a negative sense, but in their own departments, and not working together as a nation to deliver for the people of Wales.

Thank you. Cabinet Secretary.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer, and I thank Bethan Jenkins for her measured questions there. I think that while the Member picked up on the issue of Communities First, actually there’s lots in the statement, I believe, that’s quite exciting with an opportunity to drive Wales forward. I’ll give the Member some examples of the choices that we’ve made and the reasoning behind some of them.

We know that, for 15 years, Communities First has been embedded in our communities and we have been keen to ensure that we help communities grow. Prosperity is the key driver here—jobs and growth and skills. This Government’s commitment is two-fold: economic resilience in giving jobs and skills to people across our communities and well-being in terms of the well-being of individuals and the community.

The Member is absolutely right to raise the issue of why we’ve put children’s zones or focused on ACEs in this department and this is because the leverage I have in this department is around children and it touches all of my colleagues’ departments in some way, shape or form. I’ve already had conversations with three Members who have a view on education and it’s a view shared by the Cabinet Secretary. Unless we can get well-being built into the resilience of the individual as a child, actually their attainment is impossible. You can’t get people who are suffering from domestic violence or alcohol misuse or drug misuse to learn, so we have to make sure we’ve got the well-being of the individual firstly promoted. That’s why the prevention and intervention approach of this and the child zones—. That’s what we’ll be doing is a wraparound approach to children and their families in areas. We’re going to do some pilot intervention across Wales and then hopefully roll that out.

So, what else are we going to do then? If not Communities First, what is that programme? Part of that is about the discussion we’ll be having over the next couple of months to understand about an exit process, but also about what we need to do to build on the programmes we already have in place and how we can make them better. I mentioned in my statement about Families First and Flying Start, which are two key programmes in delivering against the actions they were set up to do. But, where we have some local authorities that are saying to us, ‘If we can have some more flexibility between those two programmes’—. I’ve had conversations with many in this Chamber about where Communities First was very tight in terms of a place-based approach to support. The flexibility between these two programmes, we hope, will be able to target the interventions so it’s not only about being place based, but actually the people outside those areas who need the support and are able to attract support from these areas. The PSBs are a key element in the legislation that we took through in the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. It’s about creating a well-being plan, knowing their community and understanding that inclusion and engagement are part of the principles of the WFG Act. I would expect the Minister and also the commissioner to be robust in making sure that happens across Wales.

With regard to the issue where the Member mentions financial inclusion, I know the Member has a long-standing history of financial inclusion, and I will offer the opportunity to meet with my staff to talk about the financial inclusion programme and what more we can do in terms of communities and to use her expertise in this field to help drive improvement in and across communities in Wales.

I welcome your statement. You say you want to break the cycle and shift resources into prevention and protection and you cite access to jobs, giving people the right skills and support for those jobs, adverse childhood experiences and empowerment—empowerment in communities and empowerment of communities. All of this is something I’ve been arguing for for many years and in recent weeks. I hope that means you might be, in future, supporting some of those proposals.

In proposing to phase out the Communities First programme, you state:

‘Resilient communities are empowered with a strong voice in the decisions that affect their everyday lives…and help communities take ownership of community assets, where appropriate. Implicit within this, and, indeed, throughout our new approach to communities, is an important role for the third sector.’

Why, with the benefit of hindsight, didn’t you accept the recommendations, five years ago, of the WCVA commission’s report, ‘Communities First—A Way Forward’, which said exactly that? Unfortunately, despite me and others presenting their arguments at the time, you personally rejected that.

For 15 years after the start of Communities First, child poverty levels in Wales were above England, Scotland and the UK, and so were working-age worklessness figures. Even working-age adults in Wales living in poverty, measured by the 60 per cent median income level—. The level has stayed at the same level, according to Bevan, as 1997, 1998, 1999 and 2000—the beginning of devolution, the beginning of the Communities First programmes.

Last year, the commission on social mobility and child poverty said in its state of the nation report that:

‘Trends in employment are moving in the right direction, but Wales has higher rates of low pay than other UK countries, keeping many children in poor working families’ and that:

‘Educational attainment in Wales at all levels…remains unacceptably low’.

How do you respond to the statement that the Welsh Government needs to ensure that services and support will be available to all families, including those not located in the most deprived areas? We clearly need to radically rethink the way in which we support our communities, something the sector’s been saying for goodness knows how long. Do you agree, therefore, that the Welsh Government needs to explore ways to build capacity in local communities so that they can take the lead on regeneration projects instead of the Welsh Government deciding what those projects and programmes should be directly, or through commissioned programme deliverers?

Two weeks ago, I hosted an event with Co-production Wales, Lives Through Friends, and a team of citizen and user-led organisations in the Assembly, to facilitate a conversation about how there is much more to life than services, recognising that, for too long, policy makers have mistakenly failed to nurture a caring society and have increasingly redefined care as a financial transaction with the consequences of a waste of public money, diminished citizenship and weaker communities.

The Care Council for Wales is going to be putting forward expert classes in co-production and there’ll be workshops run by the Wales Co-operative Centre. How will you and your officers engage with those training programmes so that the Welsh Government is fully on board with these community resilience programmes that are already being delivered in Wales and can light the way forward? In fact, the Co-production Network for Wales has highlighted the 1000 Lives team at Public Health Wales as a stalwart in supporting this and other co-production initiatives. The Wales Audit Office are at the forefront of co-productive evaluation and behaviour-change initiatives. Working With Not To is building a great network in north Wales, and links with the School for Social Care Research and a host of statutory and third sector organisations are already making things happen on the ground. How will you engage with them, again, to hopefully together share planning, design and delivery to take this forward?

Finally, on that theme, how would you respond to concerns expressed by Oxfam Cymru, who said that the future of the Communities First programme, the Welsh Government’s largest tackling poverty programme, remained unanswered in the Welsh Government’s programme for government, ‘Taking Wales Forward’, and they suggest reforms to Communities First based on the sustainable livelihoods approach. As they say, this three-year Building Livelihoods and Strengthening Communities in Wales project has helped over 1,100 to get their lives on track, helping people identify their strengths and assets in order to identify the root problems preventing them from reaching their potential. They also say it makes financial sense, securing an average return of £4.39 for every £1 spent across Wales—something, I believe, we emphasised in two recent debates in the Assembly. The Welsh Government, they say, must secure lasting change. Do you therefore agree with them that embedding the sustainable livelihoods approach or the asset-based development approach in all policy and service delivery in Wales will help people to break out of poverty and help build resilient communities? Thank you.

Thank you, Presiding Officer, and I’m grateful for Mark Isherwood’s contribution. I think, underneath all of that, Mark was actually subtly saying, ‘Well done’ to the Minister, as I think he actually agrees with us, on the basis he was trying to claim credit for some of that. But, on a very real point, the Member raised a couple of issues that I can pick up on. Why was the decision not taken five years ago, and why did we refuse to agree with the recommendations in the report? Well, we didn’t; we made changes to the programme at that time and increased the opportunities around employability, and the last independent report supported the logic model at the time of the refocusing of the 2012 programme. So, we did make some changes. But, we are in a place in time. As I said in the statement, when Communities First was developed, nobody ever envisaged zero-hour contracts or the changes around Brexit or the employment issues. These are things that we have to tackle here and now, and I am excited by the whole new opportunity around the Families First programme and the Flying Start programme, which are very successful interventions—100,000 new all-age apprenticeships and the childcare programme, which is the best settlement around childcare for working parents anywhere in the UK, will be delivered in our communities to help and support the people who he and I represent.

With regard to engagement, I’m very keen to work with all organisations to see how we can better deliver for our communities. The Member raised some very specific programmes, and I don’t have a view on those, but working with agencies like the WCVA will ensure that we can get into communities where Government can sometimes find it hard to do so in the engagement programme.

I don’t agree with the Member with regard to Oxfam’s view on the issue that this Government has lost its way in terms of promoting and tackling poverty. Jane Hutt earlier said about Ken Skates holding the ring for Government in tackling poverty, and I hold some of the programmes, particularly poverty among children and young people, but it is the responsibility of all of the Government to tackle the issue of poverty. The First Minister has been very clear: just because it doesn’t have a line in the programme for government doesn’t mean we’re not interested. If the Member wished to have a line for everything, then they’d be complaining about the programme for government being three very weighty documents in terms of naming everything that we do. Can I assure the Member that poverty has high prominence to make sure that we tackle this across the Government, and not just me or Ken Skates, but all Ministers within this Government?

Thank you very much. We’ve had some lengthy contributions from the spokespeople. I’ve got a number of people who wish to speak, and more are adding their names to the list as well, so could I ask Members now if they could make a very short introduction to their question? That’s not an invitation for you to have a three-minute speech—that’s a short introduction to your question and then all of your other colleagues will be able to speak in this debate. Mike Hedges.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. First of all, I’d like to express my disappointment at the statement by the Cabinet Secretary. I believe that Communities First is doing an excellent job in my constituency. But I’ve said for years that Communities First and Flying Start should be based on communities, not driven by the way the Office of National Statistics decides to collect data. That’s generally been rejected by different Ministers, including the current one. Can I start off with a plus? I welcome the continuation of the Lift scheme. The question I have is: after Communities First, what is going to happen to the following: work done on reducing utility bills; smoking cessation schemes and promoting smoke-free homes; promoting exercise and physical activity; the weight loss programmes; the clothes recycling; the food-growing and eat well schemes; the personal financial planning; the family learning; supporting children’s learning; homework clubs and all the other excellent work currently being done by Communities First in my constituency?

I’m grateful to the Member for raising the issues about the things that Communities First does really well, and I also celebrate the work from many communities that has been engaged in by staff and volunteers right across the 52 areas within Wales. But, as I’ve said, we have to consider the time and place now, and I think that there are much stronger interventions that we can lead on through other programmes. And all the things that the Member raises are important; they’re important to him and the community he represents. I’m not saying we should get rid of them either; I’m saying that we have to have a new approach to tackling the issues around prevention and early intervention, as I’ve listed in my statement. I look forward to working with the Member and other communities as to how we can best do this. I think a lot of this is already driven by local people that know their communities very well, working alongside other organisations such as Public Health Wales, who have a good, strong record on adverse childhood experiences and tackling some of the issues that the Member raises today. There are other ways of delivering these services, and I look forward to the discussion that will ensue post this statement.

Minister, I’m looking at the section that refers to integrated and responsive public services in your statement, and the new model of community learning centres. I wonder if you could tell the Chamber a little more about how that would work in relation, for example, to existing ideas around community-focused schools. It seems to me that community-focused schools have a lot to offer in tackling poverty. They can support education through getting parents and the community more involved in the educational effort. They can do a lot around childcare and the extended school day. Community-focused schools can do a lot around sport, physical activity, arts and culture, and the children in the most deprived circumstances often do not get the mum’s taxi experience—it’s only within the school setting, perhaps, that they will get that wider experience. I know it’s patchy across Wales, Minister, in terms of community-focused schools, and I think it would be wonderful if we could develop a mechanism that would require all schools, not just twenty-first century schools, but existing schools stock, to become truly community focused in the way that I’ve described and in other ways. And I wonder if you could say a little bit about community learning centres, how they relate to community-focused schools and whether we can get the mechanism in place to roll out this provision.

I’m very grateful for the positive contribution that the Member makes and raises about the important work that community-focused schools do in the way that they change their local community. I’m encouraged that the Cabinet Secretary for Education would be happy to meet with the Member, actually, to discuss the very issues that the Member raises.

On the issue around childcare, as listed in the statement regarding children’s zones, this is something that we want to build on, and it’s the same principle, John, as regards how we make sure that we have a healthy young person growing up long term. It’s not only morally right but fiscally right for Government as well, looking and planning for the long term. So, these are absolutely the things that we want to concentrate on in making early interventions. I’m already encouraged that my Cabinet colleagues, while they’ve got a day job to do in terms of their portfolio, are starting to think differently about where we should make clever interventions now—so, not just the firefighting of the day job but actually planning for the future. This is, with young people, exactly the space we need to be in, because where we see this investment being made we see much better outcomes, longer term, for young people and as they grow up.

Can I thank you for your statement, Minister? Can I say at the outset that I want to pay tribute to the staff who deliver Communities First in my constituency and also Torfaen council for their leadership of the project, and to say emphatically that, in Torfaen, it is delivering very real outcomes in the areas of employability, financial inclusion, digital inclusion and well-being? I note your commitment to phase out the Communities First programme, but, for me, the key part of your statement is where you say you will be establishing a new approach to meet the challenges of the future. It was with that in mind that I wanted to ask you a few questions.

Of course an emphasis on employability is very welcome, but do you also recognise that in some communities, particularly our most deprived communities, those communities often face so many significant barriers to employability that they often really need the softer approaches that Communities First has been so good at fostering. Can I ask about how you would see the future looking in terms of the interconnectedness, which undoubtedly exists in Torfaen, between Communities First, Families First and Flying Start? We wouldn’t want to see any of the very significant contributions that Communities First make to those programmes being lost. In Torfaen, we take a single-plan approach to these grants so they’re all planned as a unified whole. How will you ensure that that doesn’t jeopardise the vital work in this area?

On welfare reform, I’ve seen Communities First as being a very important part of making sure that we are actually resilient through these very difficult years of welfare reform. How will you ensure—also linked to what Bethan Jenkins said—that that work is not lost?

Finally, your statement alludes to engaging with internal and external stakeholders on our future approach. Can you say a little more, please, about exactly how that consultation will take place and what the deadline is likely to be? Thank you.

I thank the Member. Can I also pay tribute to many staff members in Communities First areas right across Wales who do a fantastic job in changing and creating a resilient community? I don’t doubt the work and intention of those, but we are in a conversation space. We want to talk to Communities First units about what the future looks like for these clusters and how they are shaping. The Member has championed her Communities First area for a long time, and I’m again grateful for her prompts in regarding and recognising the staff who work there.

In regard to the future, I see Families First and Flying Start and the flexibility approach—and the Member’s right, particularly in her authority, about the flexibility between programmes there. I think there is much more opportunity and the Member is right to say about the softer interventions—I see that part of the work of Flying Start or Families First will need to get into that space. Alongside the Lift programme and Communities for Work, how can we support people to get into the market and therefore their ability to access the childcare pledge that we’ll be doing for working parents? This is a jigsaw of interventions that we have to join up with a very clear picture and I’m conscious of the consultation process, which we will start today, in terms of engagement. The first cluster meeting is in the next two weeks, I think it will be, and my team are already starting to talk to people on the phone this afternoon regarding what comes next.

In terms of not just Communities First staff and the workforce around that, I want to talk to communities. I want to engage people in their own communities to understand what they need as well. So, rather than a top-down approach of Government telling communities what we think they should have, what do the communities think that they should have? That’s something that I’ve got my team working on. We’ll be doing some digital—what’s the word? [Interruption.] Consultation is the word—and that will be starting very shortly. We just need to get that up and running on the internet for people to engage with us.

Thank you very much. Simon Thomas.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I’ve taken some flak in this Chamber, particularly from Members opposite, in the past for suggesting that Communities First was not effective and not working as it should. That was borne out of the experience of living in a Communities First community myself. I’m not going to welcome the statement as such, however, as I’m not clear yet what the national anti-poverty strategy now is. But can I say to the Minister that £300 million has been spent on Communities First areas? And £100 million has been spent since the 2011 Wales Audit Office report that said it wasn’t working and wasn’t effective at tackling the main aim, which was economic deprivation in those communities. That’s borne out by the fact that the original communities in Communities First in 2001 are still the 100 most deprived communities in Wales. So, taken as that, it hasn’t been effective. Having said that, there have been lots of soft measures that I’ve seen working effectively in bringing communities together and in working to enhance people’s confidence. So, we don’t want to lose that either.

But my main question to the Minister now is: how is he going to ensure that this new programme, or series of programmes, doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but actually builds on what we have and what is already effective? Can I suggest to him that he listens to the wise words of John Griffiths, because what we have and what is already effective is where community schools get really involved in their communities? The best example I’ve seen of that is Pembroke Dock Community School in my region, in a Communities First area, which really integrates everything together. That is the model for the future. I recommend that he goes and sees it with Kirsty Williams if she hasn’t—[Interruption.]. She’s already been. I’ve certainly been several times. It’s a wonderful example of how this can be pursued. And rather than reinvent the wheel, rather than talk about child zones or whatever it may be, just think again: we have the schools, we have the ability, through schools, to work across ward boundaries and to work directly with families. That’s the best way forward. Give the money to Kirsty Williams. I’m sure she knows how to spend it [Laughter.]

I thank the Member for his contribution. It will be no surprise that I don’t agree with him on all he said; I do think that the interventions of Communities First have worked in some areas and worked very well in some areas, and Lynne Neagle and her colleagues have alluded to that. I do agree with him that the issue around the school and space is something we need to concentrate more on. So, Kirsty and I are working very closely around the childcare pledge and other actions where we know that, if we can get the right interventions for young people, it will save us, longer term, in tackling the issues of disorganised families, and the ACE programme and the child zones will support that as well. So, we’re going to have some very high-intensity areas of doing some work there.

I declare an interest: my wife works in a school in north Wales and they’ve just received a school of excellence report from the inspectors. I visited there a couple of weeks back to take some paintings that I was doing over the weekend for them, but also to see how the school operates. I absolutely agree with the Member: if the school can change the way young people feel about themselves—confidence and encouragement—they can take that out as well. I think that, while Kirsty Williams doesn’t need any help looking for my finances in the budget, I’m delighted to be able to work with her to make sure that we get the best value for money with both our interventions. That also relates to not just Kirsty, but all Cabinet colleagues, too.

Firstly, I’d just like to welcome your emphasis on the importance of the north and south Wales metro in ensuring that isolated communities are able to take up the job and training opportunities and that if they’re not connected, they simply can’t get there. So, I look forward also to your Better Jobs, Closer to Home project, because I know that in many isolated communities, there’s an in-built resistance to going too far afield.

I very much appreciate your commitment to tackling the messages we get from the analysis of adverse childhood experiences and the long-standing damage that it does to children. We have to bear in mind that the two most common adverse child experiences are verbal abuse and parental separation. Obviously, the root cause of this is often that people have children before they become adults themselves. So, there’s obviously some work to be done there to ensure that people understand just how difficult, challenging and lifelong it is to have a baby.

But I want to pick up on something—. Whilst I agree with John Griffiths and Simon Thomas about the importance of having all our schools being community focused, like Llanedeyrn Primary School in my constituency, as well as Pembroke Dock, this misses the point, which is, if we look at the EPPI-Centre evidence, which is the biggest longitudinal study that’s ever been done on childhood outcomes, we know that the die is cast by the time the child is two. So, we cannot rely on schools to meet this need. Therefore, I’d like to know a bit more about what can be done. We know that the most effective way of breaking that link is integrated, high-quality childcare.

I know that your emphasis in your department is on delivering the free childcare for three and four-year-olds of working parents. We do have a particular job here, which is partly being done by Flying Start but only within certain postcodes, and that is to ensure that we both meet the needs of those children and are delivering that parental support and family education. So, I’d like to know a little bit more about the community learning centres, and these child zones for Wales, as to how we can start to ensure that the very poorest children who are most at risk of adverse childhood experiences are getting that high-quality childcare to help them get that best start in life that we expect for all our children.

I thank the Member for her support and the comprehensive question she raises. As I said in my statement, the Communities First programme is one programme and we must rely on other aspects of what Government interventions do—what Government, local government, third sector organisations bring to our communities—and build resilience around that. We are challenged financially—all aspects of Government and Government tiers—and we have to make sure that when we make these interventions, we make clever interventions based on the evidence presented by many fields. One particular work that I know the Member is familiar with is around Public Health Wales, around ACEs. For people who haven’t seen that programme, I would urge them to do so and realise that that is why we’re taking this step to make early intervention and prevention one of our key planks for intervention for our young people. We’ve seen the devastation that can happen when you start stacking ACEs for the long term. We’ve done some work with the youth justice board and I was incredibly surprised—. Actually, the Member’s right: it is very difficult to tackle the end part of that—the issue of reoffending. When we did some modelling of the young person, actually we looked back at their lifestyle and they had four or five ACEs, which we knew, if we started to tackle those issues around alcohol or substance misuse or incarceration, then, actually, the end bit sorted itself out. So, that’s what we’re going to be doing with people and families, and that’s partly the issue around child zones, about how we get all of the ages—it is to wrap around the child and the family, to see if we can make these clever interventions. There is a great pilot of the 1,000-day programme, which is operating in Wales already. We can learn a lot from that. It’s about that, before the child is born, we know that those first two years are important, and what it is that we need to do at that stage.

The issue of childcare is something that we are working towards. I’m hoping that, towards the autumn of next year, we’ll start to introduce a very complex scheme of childcare and working, and how that fits in with the school setting as well, so that we have 30 hours of care for young people, which is appropriate and of quality. That’s a meeting that we held actually this morning, with a cross-ministerial discussion about how we start that programme. But this is about building a resilient community with all of our tools rather than one. That’s why I’m grateful for the ability to share with the Chamber today the vision and options for all of us to come together with all of these pieces of the jigsaw to make sure that we have a good future for our young people, driving forward.

I think I agree with much of what’s been said by many of my colleagues, so I don’t want to repeat that and prolong it—

Just a question, please.

I’m going to do that. What I wanted to say, however, is that I think that we do need to recognise that anti-poverty strategies have been at the forefront of Welsh Government policy for many years. In my own constituency, in common with many other constituencies whose representatives have spoken today, we’ve seen incredible work done on a daily basis—on a daily basis—around social community, digital inclusion, dealing with ex-offenders, tackling isolation, developing parenting skills, assisting with long-term unemployment. We could probably go on and on. So, an incredible amount of work is done. Therefore, I do welcome, Cabinet Secretary, the statement that you have made today, because I think that the initiatives that you have announced today, particularly the focus on ensuring positive outcomes, do take us into that direction that continues the work that we’ve already seen, and ensures that the measures that we’ve got to tackle poverty should underpin all of the work that the Welsh Government does going forward.

However, my question is around whether the Minister can tell us whether the anti-poverty priorities and programmes in many of our most deprived areas, most of which, or a lot of which, are delivered by Communities First, will be followed through with the new strategy, and, if so, how those transitional arrangements will apply, and whether he has given some thought to how we can retain the skills of the people that have so successfully delivered Communities First in some of our most deprived areas—an asset that I’m sure he wouldn’t want to lose any more than I would.

I thank the Member for her questions. Can I say that the anti-poverty strategy and the children’s anti-poverty strategy are still alive and kicking? That document is still there and we still work towards that. I met with Ken Skates about how do we refresh that and start to think about the new interventions that we have. As I said earlier, Communities First is just one of a suite of tools and intervention programmes that we can deliver on. I am still committed to working with the fantastic workforce within the Communities First areas. That’s where the discussion will start about how do we start to frame what the future looks like in terms of delivery of the many programmes that the Member talked about. What we cannot do is turn our backs on communities, but we must help them grow out of poverty and not ensure that we sanction communities to poverty for life. We’ve got to do something different, and the intervention techniques that we are talking about here are about giving personal resilience to young people to grow. This is, I think, very brave politically, because a lot of this stuff is generational. We’ll probably not see some of the effects of our early interventions growing for 10 years or so. But we must start now, and we must make that change and be brave about this, because, if we don’t, this is about a short-term political win. The fact is it’s changing our communities for the better for the future, and that’s what this new programme, I believe, will do.

Thank you. Finally, then, Llyr Gruffydd.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I’m just after a bit more clarity, Cabinet Secretary, around your proposed children’s zones for Wales. Are they geographical zones? Will they be following the footprint of Communities First areas or Flying Start? Because you also say in your statement that you’re not convinced that continuing to focus on 52 small areas is the most effective way to deliver for Wales. Now, you’ll be as aware as I am that there are children outside of those areas facing poverty and adverse childhood experiences as well, so maybe a bit of clarity would be appreciated.

Yes, I’m very happy to do so. It’s a really useful question. In terms of the children’s zones, we are offering statements of intent from local authorities now to come forward with their ideas in terms of how they would like to implement them. Indeed, I think I’m right in saying that Anglesey have already indicated about an ACE-free island, which is quite an impressive challenge for them to undertake. I think it’s ambitious, but there’s nothing wrong with ambition. We should help them to move towards that. I think we should be starting to think about the approach that Simon Thomas and John Griffiths talked about, so, children’s zones around schools and school areas, to try to see if we can get underneath that. There’s a great example of a school in Washington that did this. It turned a school completely around—a very dysfunctional school—and they concentrated on the ACE approach to intervention and turned this around into a high-performing school. So, it does work. But, at the moment, pilot schemes—lots of flexibility to see what works and what doesn’t work. I think I need to be brave enough to say, ‘Well, we’ll give that a go, and, if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work.’ But I’ll take the political flak for that, for doing something for the right reason, as opposed to for not trying some of these. We’ve got to try these in rural and urban settings and see what we can do in terms of scale as well. So, it’s a lot to work on, but we are offering local authorities flexibility to understand their communities better and know what they need.

Thank you, Cabinet Secretary.