Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. The first thing I’d like to do is to thank David Melding for creating an opportunity for me and, as he said, 50 per cent of the Assembly Members, to meet two fantastic families and their very courageous children, and also for creating an opportunity for us here today to recognise their condition and to ask for some support in that regard. That event was called ‘Too Young for Arthritis?’, and it would be in all of our minds, if we were talking about rheumatology, we wouldn’t necessarily be putting that with children. So, it came as a real eye-opener, I think, to most people, to actually meet young people and to talk about paediatric rheumatology. I was certainly—I will put my hands up to being one of those people.

They are living with a condition and receiving treatment for juvenile idiopathic arthritis, and I will refer to it as JIA from here on. Many people have spoken about Aimee, and all of us met her, but I also met Aaron, who was 12 years old, and both of them had travelled up from Pembrokeshire, from my area. And they did share their stories and their experiences very willingly and, I feel, very bravely with all of us. One of the things that I would like to add was the social isolation that they also talked about with me and the fact that, on a good day, they couldn’t actually access anywhere where they could socialise with other people very easily, due to access and due to understanding that maybe they could join a club this week, but not go to it next week. The inconsistencies of their day-to-day life and the interruption of their pattern within school, within their social life, and with their own family life, couldn’t actually be overstated, and I wanted to bring that to the table.

As somebody who travels from Pembrokeshire to Cardiff every single week, just about, and back home, I understand that it is a long journey and, mostly, it will take two hours, and sometimes it’ll take a lot longer, depending on the time of day. But for somebody who is suffering such a painful condition to have to undertake that journey on a sometimes fairly frequent basis, the pain and the discomfort must be something very difficult to bear indeed. I listened to them, as we all did, and they were asking for a specialist tertiary centre for paediatric rheumatology in Cardiff’s children’s hospital. As a consequence, and hoping that that might happen, they were looking forward to a satellite centre or hub where they might be able then to receive some treatment closer to home when that is appropriate. And they know and recognise that that would only be possible if there was that specialist tertiary centre opened in the first place.

Many here have said today that there isn’t such a service available to those individuals in Wales, and I really feel we need to look at providing that treatment here. Of course, around that, we would need some specialist multidisciplinary teams that would include doctors, nurses, occupational therapists, and physiotherapists, and I think, again, that I would call for that support. It cannot be understated that, if you live with a condition like this and you have to travel to access that treatment, it has a really serious impact on your day-to-day life, but, when you add youth to it, and the expectation that, as a young person, you would live your life, I think that we all here need to do all we can to improve their lot.