Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:55 pm on 7 February 2017.
As you might know, Erin Pizzey, the campaigner against domestic violence who opened the world’s first refuge in Chiswick in 1971, came to the Assembly recently. She said that domestic violence was about generational family violence, that we need to look at parenting, and that if we don’t intervene, these people will fill our prisons and hospitals. How do you respond to her statement, therefore, that both women and men need to be part of the dialogue to address that? I know that you have certainly associated yourself with that dialogue.
You refer to there being no universally agreed definition of community safety and to public services boards. You don’t refer to community safety partnerships, as I can see, although these are the bodies that target the main crime and disorder problems in our counties. How do you respond to repeated concern that the voice of third sector programmes such as, for example, the Flintshire and Wrexham Watch Association delivering the OWL programme, haven’t got an equal strategic voice at that level and that, perhaps, we could deliver more if they did?
Of course, we have heard reference today to Safer Internet Day, to make the internet a safer and better place for all, especially children and young people. Your colleague the Cabinet Secretary for Education has issued a statement about keeping children and young people—learners—safe online. But, given that this also reaches into our communities, I’m wondering what engagement she may have had with you over how to deliver this, not just in the education setting but more broadly.
With substance misuse, you refer to the tackling of substance misuse. We know that deaths from all drug poisoning were up 153 per cent in Wales since records began, and that alcohol deaths comprise nearly 5 per cent of all deaths in Wales. How do you respond to the concern that area planning boards are evolving in different ways—but not necessarily in better ways—leading to variations that, in some cases, have seen some all but disappear in favour of statutory agency leads, and the third sector, by omission, often absent from strategic planning? It’s similar to the previous point. In terms of the Welsh Government’s substance misuse delivery scheme, you talk about working with partners to address gaps in tier 4 services—residential detox and rehab. Of course, it is nine years since a Welsh Government-commissioned report identified the gaps, and the Welsh Government committed to a three-centre drug and alcohol detox rehab model, a central referral unit for Wales, and a substantial increase in capacity.