I'd also like to begin my contribution, as has everyone else, with a heartfelt thank you to all of the carers of Wales who, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, are never off duty and very seldom have down time. As others have said, without them, truly, our society would grind to a halt. I was staggered by Suzy Davies's figures about the fact that the numbers of carers actually outnumber our NHS in its absolute entirety, and I think we should all really just think on that very, very carefully.

Many of us in this Chamber have been carers or will be carers in the future—for example, being a parent. But, of course, these kinds of caring roles have an endpoint. Children eventually grow up and leave home, hopefully, and you no longer have to have a responsibility for them. But, of course, if you're a carer, you're caring for someone who may never leave home. You're caring for someone who will never have an improvement, will never get better, will always be relying on you to care for them. You have no light at the end of your tunnel. Therefore, it is incumbent upon us to shine some of that light.

As a constituency Assembly Member, I find a lot of my casework brings me into contact with carers of all ages, and we've discussed quite often in this Chamber older carers and the kind of help that they need. I had one case that came to me last week. Actually, it was a neighbour, and she has a very elderly neighbour, who has absolutely nobody left in this world. This elderly neighbour needs to go to Morriston Hospital for treatment, so this neighbour—who is not financially well-off and has a battered old car—takes her up there a couple of times every month for this treatment. She was basically contacting me to say, 'I love doing it. I don't mind doing it. I cannot afford the petrol money. How can you help?' This person is performing that care function. So, it's not always regulated. It's not always, you know, so-and-so looking full time after somebody else. It's the kindness of strangers, and that's what we need to inculcate and to expand, but we need to support that kindness of strangers.

For the rest of my contribution I actually want to just talk about young carers very briefly, and I know that Bethan has made some very, very good points. When I was a very new Assembly Member, I went to meet a young carer in Pembroke Dock, and she had just received a detention from school. I think, at that time, she was about 13 and a half or 14. She hadn't been able to put her homework in on time. When I arrived at her home, I was shocked to find that she looked after her very, very depressed mother. Her mother was depressed because her mother was looking after her older, difficult, autistic son, and her husband who was in a wheelchair. So, that one small girl was actually bearing the entire brunt of that family. The school had no idea that she had that kind of caring responsibility, so when she went into school looking older than I probably look, they had no sympathy for the fact that she hadn't been able to do her homework.

So, Minister, my very first question to you is: I want to pick up on the point that Bethan, I know, also made about how we must ensure that schools pick up on young people who are carers. The average is that young carers will miss some 48 days' worth of school. Gosh. If you say that quickly, it doesn't sound like very much, does it? 48 days. That's over nine and a half weeks of school. That's not skipping off to play truant or going on holiday with your pals or whatever. That's because you are looking after somebody and you're too exhausted to come back in. Minister, I would like to see some kind of system where every child in every school, if they have a caring responsibility, is registered, is logged, has pastoral support, and has another adult who is bigger than them, with slightly larger shoulders, who can help them fight their way through the very difficult situation that they find themselves in.

One more case I'm going to leave you with: a young boy and his mother. That young boy would come home every day, his heart absolutely beating, hoping his mother would be okay. She had an illness that meant that she would collapse at the drop of a hat. They lived in a house with stairs. The only loo in the house was upstairs. So, he'd be frightened that she'd go upstairs during the day and would fall down those stairs. After much lobbying, we finally got the county council to find that little family unit a bungalow to move into. Problem solved, except they said, 'No, you can have this lovely new bungalow, but guess what, little boy? Get rid of your pet dog.' Come on. We have to be kinder. We are saying that we rely as a society on the kindness of strangers to help pick up the shortfall that is in our system because we don’t have enough money, we don’t have enough people, but, boy, do we put obstacles in it? And sometimes the state itself doesn’t display that very kindness we ask.

So, Minister, a card or some kind of recognition that every child in school gets picked up. And, finally, an integrated way of a young carer having some kind of support that interrelates into local county councils or a social carer for them to help them navigate it. They don’t want to abrogate responsibility; they love their family member, but they need our help. They’re children first and foremost. Even if they are 16 or 17, it’s still a huge, heavy burden.