7. Will the Cabinet Secretary outline what support is available from the Welsh Government to enable parents to develop positive parenting techniques? (OAQ51208)

I’m grateful for the Member for Torfaen’s question. Positive parenting is fundamental to our cross-cutting priority of early years within ‘Prosperity for All’. We support every local authority in Wales to provide a range of parenting support encompassing universally available information and advice. Parenting groups and targeted and intensive early intervention through Flying Start and Families First continue.

Thank you, Cabinet Secretary. Yesterday, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children launched their new Take 5 positive parenting campaign, which looks at encouraging parents to stop and react calmly when faced with a challenging parenting situation. The campaign was developed with parents in Wales and provides easy-to-remember advice to help them keep their cool. It urges people to take five—to stop, breathe and react calmly when dealing with tantrums, difficult behaviour or other challenging parenting situations, such as mealtimes and getting dressed—and is designed to complement the positive parenting advice and programmes that are already operating. Cabinet Secretary, will you join me in welcoming the NSPCC’s campaign, which looks to provide parents with confidence to make better-informed decisions that allow them to build positive, healthy relationships with their child?

Yes, I do. Indeed, I met with the NSPCC and had a briefing on that particular campaign that they’ve launched. And, you’re right, it does complement the TalkParenting campaign that we’ve launched as Welsh Government. We must continue to work together proactively in supporting parents across our communities, and I’m grateful the Member raised that with me today.

Cabinet Secretary, I know you will agree with me that resolving attachment issues is absolutely crucial for ensuring that young people or young children can grow up to be well-rounded individuals. In the last Assembly, the children and young people committee did a very hard-hitting report on adoption and post-adoption support. A lot of children who are adopted or who are about to be adopted suffer from attachment issues, and yet still today we are being told by adopters and would-be adopters that they are finding it very difficult to access training to help them learn how to parent children who have severe attachment disorder. If we want these children to go into stable, loving forever-homes, we have to help those who want to reach out to those kids. When will your Government—. Or what can your Government do to help these parents and to give them the training that they need to make sure that not only can they adopt those children but that, when they do adopt them, those adoptions are robust and do not breakdown, as I have seen too often with constituents in my own constituency?

I share the Member’s concern around this, and we are doing work with David Melding, who chairs an advisory group for us looking at the intense vulnerability of young people put in either fostering or adoption care, and we are seeking advice on what more we can do to help with this. This is not always about cash, by the way. This is often about support mechanisms—sometimes third sector or public sector bodies—actually doing what they say on the tin, making sure that we recognise that these young people are highly vulnerable and following up on that process as well. It’s not just a case of placement; it’s about placement and support, and it’s something I’m very conscious of.