I congratulate David Melding on getting this debate today, and I’m pleased to support him. As we know from the debate, arthritis isn’t just something that older people get, because I think that is often what people think. I became aware of childhood arthritis, which affects 400 children in south Wales, after being contacted by a constituent, Dawn Nyhan, and I met her and her daughter Harriet, who is now 19. She was first diagnosed with juvenile idiopathic arthritis when she was just two years old, similar to David’s constituent. As well as the more well-known effects of childhood arthritis, such as joint damage and mobility problems, which have already been mentioned today, perhaps less well-known is that 10 to 20 per cent of children develop an inflammatory eye condition that can cause blindness if not treated. So, this illness is a very severe condition if it is left untreated.

About 60 to 70 per cent of children grow out of rheumatoid arthritis, in that they don’t have ongoing disease, but they may still have to cope with ongoing problems as a result of joint damage they suffered when they were younger, and between 30 and 56 per cent of people with childhood arthritis will experience severe limitations in dexterity and mobility in adulthood.

Sadly, Harriet’s problems are ongoing, although she is determined not to let it stop her achieving. Harriet is now training to be a nurse, but she has such damage to her joints that mobility is a problem and she still has days when she can’t walk down the stairs and she’s in excruciating pain, and she never knows when her next procedure or surgery will be required.

Harriet’s mother, Dawn, said that they first noticed pain and problems moving when she was two years old. She had been an early walker but was reduced to shuffling to get around and was obviously in great pain. At first, the parents were told it was growing pains and they were passed, they felt, from pillar to post without a diagnosis. David mentioned about the importance of early diagnosis in his speech. I think that is really one of the points that we need to address today—there’s not enough knowledge among GPs of junior arthritis, and the family also found that there was no knowledge of it in A&E when they took Harriet there.

Eventually, after about five months, they had a diagnosis and, since then, they say they have had fantastic care—the problem was reaching that actual point. And, of course, it’s also important to note, as we’ve already heard, that they have the excellent care from their consultant, Jeremy Camilleri, who is also my constituent. He always does his utmost to help, but he is still an adult rheumatologist who can only dedicate a quarter of his working time to children. This motion highlights the need for a specialist, dedicated child rheumatology specialist for the population of south Wales, really, which has a population that does justify that.

In Harriet’s case, lots of physiotherapy and support, and the use of the hydro pool at UHW, literally did help to get her back on her feet. But there have been continued flare-ups of pain and swelling in Harriet’s knees and ankles throughout her school career. She’s had to spend a huge amount of her time in hospital, either to receive treatment or to have fluid drained from her joints.

She also lost a lot of school time, and I think this loss of school time is a very important issue. Her parents found it difficult to get support for learning at home, although the school, Llanishen High School, was absolutely very supportive about sending work home. But she wasn’t able to get a tutor at home, so they had to pay for private tutors to help Harriet get 10 GCSEs—three A* and seven As—despite having a very low attendance record at school and having surgery on her joints during both years of GCSE exams.

So, I really do feel that, with all the problems she’s encountered, and with such support from her parents, she has really achieved very well. She was a keen sportswoman and she captained the hockey team until she was 16, when she was told her playing days were over because of the amount of bone damage she had suffered on her knees because of the arthritis.

So, we know that there are hundreds of children with this extremely painful condition and if it’s not treated in childhood, bone damage and damaged joints are the result. While children do need the treatment in hospital, we’ve already heard about the difficulty of the long car journeys to get that treatment, and those journeys are very painful. So, I hope that the Cabinet Secretary will think of a model that can address all the issues that have been raised today and can find some way of addressing this very debilitating, very important illness, which can be prevented and can be addressed if it is diagnosed early enough. Thank you.