4. Will the First Minister make a statement on paediatric care in Wales? OAQ(5)0553(FM)

Yes. We are committed to ensuring safe and sustainable paediatric care delivered on the basis of the very best available clinical evidence and advice.

The First Minister will be aware of the limitations on paediatric care at Withybush hospital and I have a particularly distressing constituency case that has arisen, where a child was taken out of hours to Withybush in June 2016, in pain that was diagnosed wrongly as a urine infection, treatable by antibiotics. Next morning, the child was taken to A&E with something that was suspected to be appendicitis. The child was then rushed to Glangwili for an emergency operation for peritonitis. The same child, in January of this year, was again taken to the out-of-hours GP in Withybush with a fever. That was misdiagnosed as a virus. The child was then driven the following morning by the parents to Glangwili where the symptoms of scarlet fever were diagnosed, which was correct. I know that an individual case isn’t necessarily representative of everything, but given the out-of-hours limitations on paediatric care, if there had been a paediatric specialist in Withybush at the time that the child was taken to the hospital for the initial diagnosis, it’s perfectly possible, and indeed likely, that those errors might not have been made. So, can the First Minister tell us what the Government may be able to do in order to restore full 24-hour paediatric services at Withybush?

First of all, the situation that the Member’s described is a situation where I would expect the GP to make a diagnosis rather than a paediatric consultant being needed to do that. We’re talking here about an infection, or scarlet fever—a GP should be able to pick up on that. You wouldn’t need a consultant to diagnose that. There are changes that have taken place at Withybush—that much is true—at the paediatric ambulatory care unit. They are temporary, they’re not designed to be long term, and I know that the health board is working hard to resolve the issue and to reinstate the 12-hour service as soon as possible.

First Minister, when children leave hospital, particularly if they have a life-limiting condition of any kind, they’re still going to need medical and, of course, social care at home, and that will affect their carers and other children in the household. In July last year, the Minister said that the Government was refreshing the carers strategy at the end of last year and it is, as far as I can tell, still being currently refreshed in both January and March this year. If your priorities are young carers and carers’ respite, when can they see what you mean by that?

Well, we want to make sure that the strategy is right; that means taking into account as many views as possible in order for the strategy to be robust. The strategy will be published as soon as possible, once it’s felt that the strategy is one that can be presented to the people of Wales.