Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd at 1:42 pm on 14 March 2018.

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Photo of Angela Burns Angela Burns Conservative 1:42, 14 March 2018

I'm delighted to hear that, because I do think there's still so much stigma attached to the whole area of mental health and how we recognise it, how we pick it up and how we help people who might be going into crisis to be able to access the support that they need.

I spent a couple of hours this morning in Pontardawe looking at Hafal's new facility, and I know you've been there, because you opened it, and it's a great facility. And my goodness me, isn't it how mental health services should be provided? It's an old building that's had a whole new lease of life. It hasn't had millions and millions and millions spent on it, but it's funky, it's modern, it feels like a hotel and you're treated as a guest not a patient or a leper, which can sometimes come across in some of our old ways of dealing with people with mental health issues. They have 16 beds there, but only four are taken up, and that's the maximum occupancy they've had since they've been open, because there is still this reluctance from health services to engage with this kind of provision. It's a great step up, and, if anybody wants to go and visit it, I really recommend it, because it enables people to understand how they can live a life independent and be well and it stops that awful revolving-door scenario. 

What do you think you, as the Cabinet Secretary, can do to ensure that a facility like that doesn't actually wither on the vine, but is used really well, because it really is a foreshadow of what mental health services should be—that parity, that equality and that absolute respect?