7. What steps is the Cabinet Secretary taking to help schools to promote mental wellbeing? OAQ52241

Thank you, Lee. 'Our national mission' makes clear that through a new curriculum with a distinct emphasis on the well-being of learners, developments in professional learning and the child and adolescent mental health services inreach pilots, we are taking action to help schools promote and support positive mental health and well-being.  

Thank you. I know the Cabinet Secretary will agree that early recognition is important in providing support for children and young people, and schools sometimes struggle to provide the most appropriate support, both in terms of having the skills and capacity within the school, but also in accessing services in the community and through CAMHS. Mental health charities and schools report that the range of mental health interventions going into schools often isn't joined up and can be confusing. So, what can the Cabinet Secretary do to ensure that the different actors co-ordinate and that there's a clear route to access information and signpost pupils to the support they need?

Thank you, Lee, for that important question. Having recognised the difficulty that some schools can have in obtaining specialist services, I and the Cabinet Secretary for health have been able to join forces and to combine a monetary resource from both of our budgets to joint-fund the £1.4 million CAMHS inreach project that is happening on a pilot basis in a number of areas across Wales. The purpose of that pilot is to understand how best we can support teachers and school staff to support their children and what the most effective mechanism of putting specialist mental health services into schools actually is. We will be reflecting on that pilot with a view to, if possible, if it's a success—and I believe that it will be a success—rolling that programme out further.

As we develop our new curriculum, it'll be important that we are in a position to provide the professional development opportunities for teachers so that they know how best to address some of these issues, and we continue to look at innovative practice across Wales, where we can to see if we can make improvements. So, recently, at the invitation of Paul Davies, I was able to visit Ysgol y Preseli, which has a very innovative approach to promoting children's health and well-being as part of an international research project with Harvard University. The impacts there are very, very real. It's innovative work and I was very pleased to see it. Officials will be exploring whether there is more that we can do in other parts of Wales to build on the experiences of Ysgol y Preseli, where the focus is very much on early intervention and building children's self-esteem, their self-worth and positive attitudes towards their learning and building up their optimism that, actually, they can succeed in school and that, by succeeding in school, they can live a better, happy, healthier life.

Cabinet Secretary, you'll be aware that the Children, Young People and Education Committee have expressed concerns about the lack of resilience amongst children and young people in our schools. But it did highlight, in its recent report on this issue, some excellent practice that is going on in my own constituency in north Wales at Ysgol Pen y Bryn in Colwyn Bay, which you have also visited with me to see the mindfulness programme that is working in that school.

One of the tragedies about that excellent practice is that the pioneer schools that are developing the new curriculum have not attempted to try to access the expertise that is available in that school. What action are you taking, as the Welsh Government, to ensure that where there is good practice, it is being engaged with in terms of the development of the new curriculum, so that more people can benefit from it?

Thank you, Darren. As you say, there is an array of interventions that can be successfully used in school to address pupils' well-being—mindfulness being one that I know is particularly successful in the school that we visited together. Through the pioneer school network and the individual areas of learning and experience, they are taking a range of evidence and advice from expert groups. Now that we're at this stage of the development of the curriculum, I would expect to see a far greater level of interaction between pioneer and non-pioneer schools, working in their cluster arrangements, and I've already received feedback from some schools that were previously critical of a lack of interaction, saying that things are now much better.

I'm not sure if the Member was in the Chamber yesterday to hear me say that, actually, I've written to the Children, Young People and Education Committee offering to organise specific visits for committee members out to pioneer schools, so that this work can be seen by Members on the ground, and I hope that the Member will be able to avail himself of the opportunity to do that. But I want to see as much dialogue as we can between the pioneer and non-pioneer networks.

I would be interested in seeing the pilot that you mentioned—

I'm ever so sorry; it's disappeared.

Okay. I'd be interested in—. Is it working?

Nothing. Sorry. I'll borrow Lesley's—I hope your ears are clean. [Laughter.]

Is it working now? Is that okay?

Yes.

I would be interested in hearing about the pilot that you mentioned in answering Lee Waters, because I’ve been asking, over a number of years, about work in schools in the context of self-confidence, given the work that I’m doing on the cross-party group on eating disorders. On that basis, I’d like to ask you what work you have been doing with the health Minister on the eating disorders framework, which is currently being reviewed. There are workshops happening across Wales. In the last meeting that we had of the cross-party group, there was mention of how important it is to merge health and education in this area, because the sooner that we can see that a young person has an eating disorder, then the less likely it is that things will worsen, if there’s a strong educational system in place to help them not have to deal with the problems that emerge from eating disorders. So, I would urge you to be part of that framework review, if you’re not already, and also to share that pilot that you mentioned today.

Thank you, Bethan. The Cabinet Secretary for health and I recognise that by working together, the impact of our actions will be so much greater. We also recognise that, unless we address a child's health and well-being, especially their mental health, they cannot make the most of their opportunities within the education system to achieve their very best. How can we expect a child who is in mental distress to be able to access a curriculum? And so, we are continuing to see where we can, across our portfolios, work together to make that impact. That's the reason why we are funding the CAMHS in-reach project in a number of local authorities across Wales, so that we can better understand how we can support schools, as I said, to support their children better and have quick access to more specialist services if that is needed. But I will specifically, as a result of your question, sit down with the Cabinet Secretary for health if he is willing to do so to discuss, on this particular issue around eating disorders, what more we can do to join up work in both our departments.

Finally, question 8—Mike Hedges.