Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:44 pm on 12 October 2016.
I wouldn’t disagree with that, but I still think that deprivation is a substantive contributor to emotional ill health.
I’d like to pay tribute to Angela Rayner, who’s the shadow Secretary of State for Education in another place, who spoke so courageously about the inability of her mother to love her, and this was in the presence of her mother, in front of about 1,000 women. I think that that was such a courageous act, both on the part of her mother and her, which was really part of her journey to ensure that that inability to love was not passed down to the next generation.
One of the things I think I’ve spoken about before is the Roots of Empathy programme, which Action for Children has been running in Llanedeyrn Primary School in my constituency, which has been evaluated as being something that really does deal with children’s agony over the inability to understand what makes for positive relationships. And this is about having a parent with a baby who comes in to the school once a fortnight, and those children being able to develop that relationship. This reduces aggression in the playground and absenteeism.
At Cathays High School, we have mindfulness training and restorative practices, which have also ensured the building of emotional resilience in our young people for later life. I think that it’s absolutely clear from the PPI report and other reports that have been done that it has to be a systematic, whole-school approach to emotional health, well-being and resilience. It can’t just be in a single lesson; it’s got to be something that’s carried out across the school, and I think that it then does support children who are having unhappy times elsewhere to at least develop the emotional resilience to overcome them.