While we accept that the most specialist of services will sometimes require patients to travel, our report is clear that mother and baby unit provision needs to be developed in Wales. Recommendation 6 called on the Welsh Government to establish a mother and baby unit in south Wales, commissioned and funded on a national basis to provide all-Wales services and adequately staffed in terms of numbers and disciplines. However, our seventh recommendation acknowledges that a unit in south Wales will not necessarily be suitable for mothers and families in mid and north Wales, for example. As such, we call on the Welsh Government to engage as a matter of urgency with NHS England to discuss options for the creation of a centre in north-east Wales that could serve the populations on both sides of the border.

While we welcome the Government's acceptance of these recommendations, we are disappointed that it still remains unclear what the model of in-patient care in Wales will be, and we are also concerned that the data we requested on the level of demand for in-patient care has not yet been published, and we hope to hear more about this in the Cabinet Secretary's reply to the debate.

I'd like to move on now to discuss awareness of perinatal mental health. It was clear from our inquiry that this remains poor among the public and health professionals. Front-line staff, including midwives and GPs, reported feeling ill equipped to identify and treat maternal mental illness. Therefore, we recommended that the Welsh Government undertake a public awareness campaign to improve understanding of perinatal mental health and the symptoms. We are disappointed by the rejection of this recommendation but look forward to hearing more from the Cabinet Secretary in his reply about the public education approaches he believes will be most effective in achieving the levels of awareness we think are crucial if we are to reduce the high level of stigma reported to us during our inquiry.

The need to improve identification of perinatal mental illness and increase communication between professionals to ensure that vulnerable patients are identified quickly and receive the continuity of care they need were also key themes. We are pleased the Government has accepted in principle our recommendation that every health board should have a specialist perinatal mental health midwife in post to help with this and that health professionals likely to encounter these issues receive pre-registration training and continuing professional development on perinatal mental health, and we look forward to hearing how this work will be taken forward.

The importance of bonding and attachment was a key theme that emerged in the inquiry. We were told that, if secure attachments are not established early in life, children can be at greater risk of detrimental outcomes, including poor physical and mental health and low educational attainment. We are disappointed that the Cabinet Secretary rejected our three recommendations in this chapter. We believe our suggestion of a specialist health visitor with a focus on perinatal and infant health warrants further consideration. We also believe that further consideration of the impact of feeding on perinatal mental health is crucial. The Cabinet Secretary's response that there's currently conflicting evidence in this area is the very reason we called for further work to be undertaken, and we urge him to look at this again.

Finally, the use of medication during pregnancy was a key theme arising in evidence. We believe this is an area in significant need of attention for the benefit of both professionals and patients alike. The final chapter of our report begins a conversation about the link between mental health and health inequalities. It is clear that the perinatal period offers a particular opportunity for safeguarding well-being in the long term. We believe a more concerted effort to reach more vulnerable groups is required and further research is needed to identify the best mechanisms for early identification and treatment of populations in greatest need. We are pleased the Cabinet Secretary's accepted our recommendations and we look forward to monitoring them.

In drawing to a close, I would like to acknowledge the enormous contribution of the charity and voluntary sector in the field of perinatal mental health and in supporting neonatal and bereaved parents. It was clear from what we heard that it is often the third sector that identifies gaps in service provision and goes on to fill them. Without the third sector, many important services simply wouldn't exist. A number of our recommendations relate to this, not least our call for more to be done to provide funding for, and raise awareness of, these services. We think this will enable the statutory and third sectors to join together to provide integrated clinically- and cost-effective interventions. We also echo the calls made by specialist charities for revised neonatal standards to be published. It has taken too long for these to be issued and I want to emphasise to the Cabinet Secretary the need for these long-awaited standards to be published as soon as possible.

I would like to close by thanking all the organisations and professionals who've engaged so actively with this inquiry, but also to thank all those with lived experience who so willingly shared their views with us and whose experiences have been so vital to the committee's work on this. Thank you.