Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:20 pm on 20 June 2017.
I hosted a young carers event in the Senedd on Saturday, which was well attended, mostly by young carers from across Cardiff. I know that they told me there that you’re working on a card system so that young carers can identify in schools or in social settings that they are a carer, so that they get treatment that’s sensitive to what they need. But, almost all the young carers that I spoke to mentioned the fact that if they need to pick up a prescription and they’re under 16, in an emergency situation—. One of the girls who was there, her father is psychotic and needed to have medication urgently, but she was refused access to that medication because she was under 16. Many of them told me how they felt they weren’t respected because they weren’t able to pick up that medication. They weren’t wanting to use it for any other reason, apart from to give it to their loved ones. I want the Welsh Government to look at this and bring back a statement, to look if there are ways to be more flexible for those young carers who actually need to do this for very real reasons, and to try and communicate with them as to what you’re doing as a Government, generally, for young carers in Wales.