Part of 1. 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:50 pm on 16 May 2017.
We’ve not seen a massive reduction in waiting times, First Minister. You can fairly say that waiting times are no worse than they were before, but you can’t say that they are improved. It’s not clear at all what those improved outcomes are from this extra spending, but what we do know is that the number of children requiring counselling is going up, and that’s a good thing, because, hopefully, that means that problems can be prevented before they become severe and require specialist help. However, we know that many schools don’t have enough counsellors or teachers with training to help those pupils who may need it. Also, we’ve seen a reduction in local authority youth workers—a staggering 40 per cent in that workforce as a decrease. This is clearly going to have an impact on whether the children experiencing the low-level mental health problems are going to be able to get the support that they need, particularly as your Government has raised the threshold for accessing specialist CAMHS. I spoke recently to someone who works with care leavers, who told me that they’re only able to refer young people who are at risk of suicide. They have no capacity in the system to work on mental health prevention. Is that situation acceptable to you, First Minister? When is there going to be an early intervention service, that’s so badly needed?