I therefore call on Lynne Neagle to speak on the topic she has chosen—Lynne Neagle.

Thank you, Llywydd, and I’d like to begin by showing a short video, please.

A DVD was shown. The presentation can be accessed by following this link:

DVD presentation.

Thank you. I know there are some Members who attended the launch of the ‘State of Child Health Report 2017’ that the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health organised, who have seen that video, but I did think that it was definitely worth giving it wider viewing. I’d like to thank Naomi Lea and the Fixers organisation for allowing us to show that film today, which is called ‘Spot the Signs’, and, in a very simple but effective way, it encourages us all to ask ourselves the question: would we know the signs if we saw them?

So, I welcome the opportunity today to talk about a subject that I feel very passionately about and one that is vitally important for all of us, as parents, carers and educators—how we develop emotional resilience in our children and young people. And I’m very pleased to give a minute of my time to Angela Burns today.

Mental health problems affect about one in 10 children and young people, with nearly half of all mental health problems beginning by the age of 14. I’ll just repeat that: nearly half of all mental health problems begin by the age of 14. That is a statistic that should concern every one of us. Twenty-four hour social networking, increasing exam stress, and a body-obsessed culture are just a few examples of how modern society can negatively affect the mental health and well-being of our children and young people, and demonstrates the pressing need to address this.

Many of us will, at some point throughout our lives, have to deal with and mange problems of poor mental well-being. For some, coping may come naturally, but for others, they may need to learn or be taught how to build emotional resilience. It is therefore incredibly important that young people are taught how to develop positive coping strategies and that they learn how to take charge of their own emotional health.

We as elected representatives are, unfortunately, too familiar with young constituents who’ve been referred to specialist child and adult mental health services, some of whom still wait far too long for assessment and treatment. The previous health Minister said that children’s mental health is everyone’s business, and in that, he is absolutely right. He told the previous children’s committee, when discussing the long wait for CAMHS services that the CAMHS end of the service is the clinical end of the service; it is not intended, nor was it ever intended to be the whole answer to young people who are experiencing difficulties as they are growing up, and whose mental well-being needs to be attended to. He said that he was always anxious that drawing a young person into specialist mental health services labels them in a way that lives with them for a very long time during their lives and that we are by no means at a point where such a label does not have costs with it in terms of stigma and other impacts on people’s lives. So, we should always be attending to that borderline to make sure that those people who need a CAMHS service get it and those young people whose needs can be better attended to by the more universal and general services get the help that they need there. So, the support that young people can access before specialist CAMHS is absolutely crucial.

The commitments and priority that the Welsh Government has placed on tackling and developing more effective mental health provision for children and young people, through the Together for Children and Young People programme, is to be welcomed. I know that I, along with other AMs, will continue to closely monitor the progress of the programme to ensure that it delivers that crucial timely access to all specialist CAMHS.

But the programme also includes very welcome work streams to promote universal resilience and well-being and to promote early intervention and support for vulnerable children and young people. But I would argue that this work needs to be taken forward with much greater urgency in a genuinely cross-cutting way across Welsh Government. There needs to be a recognition that, for many of our young people, a referral to specialist CAMHS means that we have already failed to support them when they need it most.

The introduction and embodiment of emotional resilience early in a child’s life, through school, youth work settings, and out-of-school clubs, is vital to preventing future problems for our young people. We need to make that early intervention a reality in Wales. Emotional health programmes in schools, an embedded public health approach, and mandatory inclusion of emotional health and well-being within the curriculum, could all help reduce the burden placed on our already stretched CAMHS services. Indeed, the title of the 2001 Welsh Government’s CAMHS strategy, ‘Everybody’s Business’ sums up the importance of this issue and that it cannot just be seen as an NHS matter. In fact, the 2001 strategy had a whole chapter on schools, demonstrating their important role. It’s something that’s been recognised for many years, but it is also clear that we have much more progress to make on this.

In Wales, we have a great opportunity, through the Donaldson review of the curriculum, to drive forward and embed a resilient approach that could introduce a new culture of change and tackle the stigma attached to mental health earlier on. Although the recommendations by Donaldson include an approach to health and well-being, without the right support for teachers to deliver it on the ground, it simply will not happen.

Currently, initial teacher training providers have flexibility in the way they design and deliver their programmes, with no input from the Welsh Government on the content of the courses, nor is there information available in the public domain on the extent to which initial teacher education providers in Wales are including mental health issues as part of qualified teacher status. As a result of the recommendations in the Furlong report, we have an opportunity to improve the quality of initial teacher training courses and ensure that they are aware and trained from the outset. Indeed, prior to the last election, the Welsh Government showed every sign of having grasped the opportunity presented to us, by taking Furlong and Donaldson together and creating a new career path for teachers as guidance teachers. A new type of teaching professional, trained in counselling and familiar with the workings of other agencies, like social services, they were to act as advocates for children with emotional issues and as a go-to person for pupils and fellow professionals as a first response before things developed into a crisis or became intractable. Critically, these guidance teachers were also to become trained specialists in delivering better, more consistent, personal, social and health education in our schools. So, I do ask the question today: what has become of this policy?

If the Welsh Government is serious about meeting its commitment to preventing children and young people entering CAMHS in the first place then these preventative measures must absolutely be a priority, driven forward across Welsh Government. Samaritans Cymru firmly believe that emotional health provision should be made mandatory within the new curriculum. They want to see emotional health programmes delivered in schools as a form of promotion, prevention and early intervention, and believe that referrals to CAMHS will continue to rise unless these preventative measures are embedded in educational settings.

There is already some fantastic practice out there. Samaritans Cymru offer the DEAL project—developing emotional awareness and listening—with free, web-based teaching resources. Through their Aberdare and Cardiff DEAL pilot schemes, eight schools are implementing the programme into their curriculum for this academic year. Samaritans Cymru have said that teachers who’ve had the DEAL training are more happy and confident to deliver emotional health awareness to their pupils.

Save the Children also deliver programmes in schools. Their Journey of Hope programme, in partnership with Place2Be, is currently being delivered to 10 schools in Cardiff. The programme, which has been added to the early intervention foundations directory of evidence-based practice, offers children positive strategies to cope with traumatic events, helps build their natural resilience, and strengthens their social support networks.

In my own constituency, Penygarn primary school are using their pupil deprivation grant money to employ a play therapist and have created a special nurture classroom for children who need extra support to deal with emotional problems. St Alban’s Roman Catholic school, working in partnership with the ‘South Wales Argus’ and Coleg Gwent’s construction and plumbing students, have renovated their old caretaker’s house and are turning it into a sanctuary building for young people. Similarly, staff from Garnteg primary school will soon undertake a training course to enable them to teach mindfulness in schools.

But, of course, the onus isn’t just on schools to deliver this approach; our youth services across Wales, as we’ve heard today, provide key support to children and young people on a range of issues and are an important preventative service when it comes to promoting young people’s mental health. The Council for Wales of Voluntary Youth Services insists that it’s absolutely critical that their open-access model of youth provision is maintained, supported and developed so that all young people can have access to services that enhance their resilience and respond to their needs. I fully agree with this view.

So, in conclusion, there is lots of good practice in building resilience in our children and young people out there, but there is not a coherent and consistent whole operating in Wales. Unless we deliver a step change in early intervention, we will continue to see the CAMHS service picking up the pieces for our children and young people. Crucially, we need to critically revise our expectations of schools on this agenda and equip the system with specialist guidance for all teachers, so that they have the confidence to deliver in this area and ensure that our children and young people receive all the help and support they deserve. Thank you.

Lynne, first of all, I’d like to pay an enormous tribute to you, because you are such an advocate for children and young people and for tackling the issues that we have with the child and adolescent mental health services. Because I agree with everything that you’ve said this afternoon: I think it is vitally important that we enable our children to become more emotionally and psychologically resilient. We’re in a really cruel world and it’s getting tougher by the day. Some kids have tough families, very chaotic lives that they have to cope with, other children are always susceptible to what the media have to say, to the celebrity culture—‘You’re too thin, you’re too fat, you’re too tall, you’re too short’—to everything else. There’s bullying and that can be rife. We’ve heard so many times about adverse childhood experiences and the damage they can have on someone in the long term.

So, I think to make emotional health as a proper part of the curriculum, and to use Donaldson to try and drive this change forward, would be absolutely key. So, Cabinet Secretary, I would ask you to perhaps tell us a little bit about what discussions you’ve had with the Cabinet Secretary for Education to drive this forward.

I do want to add that I speak not just as an Assembly Member, but also as a mother, and, as many of us who have young children in our lives whom we love and cherish, we’ve all have been through the times when we’ll have dealt with them as they’ve come home from school having had a terrible day, where they’ve been bullied mercilessly or they just don’t get what it is that they’re not quite right about. And I thought that that film really portrayed that—the loneliness and the isolation that young children can experience. So, anything that the Government can do to ensure that our children are fit to face their adult lives would be very, very welcome.

My own personal opinion: building an emotionally resilient and psychologically tough individual is actually more important than straightforward plain education. In education, we have to get past this business that it’s about learning, it’s about lessons, it’s about exams: if we can deliver, at the end of primary, at the end of secondary, at the end of FE, and at the end of HE, young people who can cope with this world, then we will have succeeded, because they can do the rest of the learning at another stage.

I call on the Cabinet Secretary for Communities and Children to reply to the debate—Carl Sargeant.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Can I start by thanking Lynne Neagle for leading this debate today? It is a topic that’s close to my heart too, and I’m very grateful for the very powerful contribution that you’ve brought to the Chamber this evening.

First of all, I’d also like to recognise the work of the Chair of the Children, Young People and Education Committee. The committee has already undertaken some important work and consultation on the first 1,000 days of a child’s life, and I look forward to seeing the committee’s report and recommendations. Members will be aware that I am intent on doing all I can to increase the resilience of communities, so that they can be better equipped, as Angela Burns says, to deal with the challenges that they face.

I listened carefully to the contribution. I am slightly off script at the moment, because I listened carefully to what you’re saying, and I absolutely agree. And I’ll go on to explain about what my thoughts are, but I think you presented part of the jigsaw, part of the solution to the rounded approach that we need to build into the resilience of an individual. I think the schooling factor of that is an important one, and you’re pushing at an open door with me in terms of our ability to do that, because, whereas children face adverse childhood experiences, while the direct effect is critical to all children, some are more resilient than others and can deal with it better. We can get into that space, and I’m absolutely convinced that, if we don’t do this early intervention and prevention, our health service will collapse—our mental health services will collapse in the future. We’ve got to get into that space of doing something different. But the politics of this is even more incredibly difficult, because the things that Angela talked about, the expectations of individuals—the five O-levels or the five GCSEs, or the attainment level of chasing targets—are all unachievable if we don’t have a resilient young person. So, you can want all the five GCSE results you want, but, if you’ve got a broken person, they’ll never, ever achieve academic success unless you fix that.

So, the good news is that resilient skills can be developed and learnt, and early age is an important factor, and I take on board the contribution that Members have made this evening.

Building resilience—the ability to adapt to adversity, trauma or significant sources of stress—can help our children and young people to manage feelings of anxiety and uncertainty and, in turn, this will help them to thrive, as Angela says about contributing as members of the community as they reach their full potential, but the risk is huge if we don’t get this intervention right.

The onus is on all of us. It’s on all of us. And that’s why I said the jigsaw effect of what you’re suggesting here is only part of the solution to resolving this issue. And to foster an environment in society where our young people are not held back by circumstances or place, but are supported to become resilient, is something that we should all strive upon, including all departments of Government, all the public sector, but, importantly, all of us too. Many of you know of the focus I’ve been giving on early years, and my absolute determination to give children the best start in life. That in itself causes friction amongst colleagues, because I’m committed to making sure we get the best deal for our young people; it’s the best investment we could ever make. If we get this right now, it saves us money; it’s fiscally right to do, but morally right to do, too. We get two wins here if we get this embedded. There is a widespread agreement that early childhood experiences are crucially important to children’s development long-term and their achievements later in life. And evidence does tell us that early life experiences affect a child’s development and influence behaviour in adolescence and adulthood. Adverse childhood experiences have a long-term damaging consequence, and I’m determined to prevent and mitigate the impact of ACEs in everything that I can do. My whole department has a focus on delivering this—from housing to community safety, we have to get underneath this and see that this is more than just warm words. We need delivery.

That’s why programmes such as Flying Start and Families First are really important to us. The investment of £77 million in Flying Start and £42 million in Families First are things that we get into our communities and underneath the very difficult situations that we’re found ourselves in—the submission around children zones, the introduction of that in Wales, and the introduction of an ACEs hub that is being developed with CymruWellWales now, making sure that the things that you talked about, Lynne, about making sure that we can get beyond the educational aspect of this, but, in everything we do, we consider the resilience of an individual—rather than a place-based approach, a person-based approach, and how do we need to support them. This goes for all children through a system and, in particular, I’m very concerned about our looked-after children—the most vulnerable in our communities that, actually, we let down. I’m a parent, as well as many in this room, and I am embarrassed sometimes about the circumstances we place our young people in—the vulnerability of that challenge. I did a conference/seminar/question time with David Melding the other week, when we froze to death in the Senedd, but actually it was a really effective piece of work, talking and listening—more importantly—to young people who’ve had real experiences of the system that we have presided over, and we’ve let young people down. It’s something that we cannot afford to do in the future.

Lynne, the work that you’ve done to bring this to the Chamber is important, but more importantly for me as a leader in the public sector, I have to make sure that all my interventions and all my colleagues’ interventions focus on the prevention and early intervention process to make sure that we get this right for the future. And I’m grateful for the—

Cabinet Secretary, will you take an intervention?

Indeed. Yes, of course.

I just wonder, speaking with my mother hat on for a moment, if you would consider, or if you are already doing, guides or advice for parents about how to help them. Because, of course, schools are one half of the equation, but they spend 50 per cent of their time elsewhere. Whilst many do have chaotic lives, there’s an awful lot where you can have the most robust family, but still have one little flower that can be trodden on. For parents to understand how they can help their children to ignore those adverts, to not follow that celebrity culture and not self-harm because they’re not thin enough, et cetera.

The Member’s absolutely right. I was going to come onto that, in terms of the biggest influence in the early years of a child’s life being the parenting, and the process around what we can do to support a quality environment to support parents. We want to do that. We’re supporting that through our ‘Parenting. Give it time.’ programme, but there’s more we can do in that space. We are committed, on a cross-party basis in many cases, to legislating to remove the defence of reasonable punishment—another aspect of quality parenting—and giving people the tools to support young people as they grow up.

Co-ordinating this crucial piece of work is going to be important. The parenting framework is something that we provide as a strategic, joined-up approach. I don’t like strategies because they generally turn into dusty documents on a shelf. It’s really important that we see delivery. So, my challenge to the sectors, to Government, is asking, ‘With this strategy, are we now delivering?’ Let’s test the system. It’s not a case of, ‘Yes, we tick the boxes here.’ What are the real outcomes? What are the real outcomes for our young people? We know that CAMHS is frustrated by the challenges that they face in terms of numbers.

Actually, I agree with you. When we get to the CAMHS stage, we’re at the end of that process. We should be much earlier on. The things that we do today will have an effect tomorrow. So, moving from the day job of managing a system to intervention is something that I am absolutely passionate about and I know my colleagues are too. I’ll continue the discussion with Kirsty Williams with regard to the very specific suggestions you talk about around Donaldson and the Samaritans outcomes there.

On the broader issue, like I said about the jigsaw pieces coming together, what we’ve got to do now is bring those jigsaw pieces together and put a picture on there, so that we understand what our vision for the future is. My commitment around resilient communities is a two-pronged approach, and I’ll have said this in the Chamber before about economic regeneration and giving families and young people jobs, skills and opportunities to move into a capital programme where they feel resilient and strong, but also building on the emotional aspect of ACEs and well-being in the community and individuals too. The two together, I think, will have a dramatic effect on well-being, but also the effects of our communities on poverty and development too.

So, I’m very grateful for the opportunity. I’ve done several short debates and this has been one that has been very effective in terms of making me think about the job that I do, and hopefully the jobs that we all do. The responsibility of managing and supporting young people is one for us all. I will continue to work in that guise and I look forward to working cross party, particularly with you as Chair of the committee, to make sure that we can continue to, hopefully, tackle the issues that are affecting our young people in the future. Diolch.

Thank you very much and that brings today’s proceedings to a close. Thank you.

The meeting ended at 18:34.