I’m sure that you’d all like to join me in thanking the young people for sharing their views and experiences with us. I hope that gives everyone a taste of some of the things that came up during our inquiry.

So, what did we conclude? We believe that a step change is urgently needed in the support available for the emotional and mental health of children and young people in Wales. What is available has been too limited for too long. We have called our report 'Mind over matter', because we think the time has come to do just that—to put mind over matter; to deliver appropriate, timely, and effective emotional and mental health support for our children and young people, once and for all.

While we recognise that improvements have been made in specialist child and adolescent mental health services in the last two years, it is not enough. More is needed, particularly in relation to primary care services, crisis care, and how we refer our most vulnerable children and young people into support services. Medical diagnosis alone should not be the key that opens the door to support. Being without a diagnosed disorder does not diminish the severity of distress and harm experienced. It should not act as a barrier to getting help with services.

We need to urgently help this so-called 'missing middle'. Our predecessor committee was told in 2014 that too many children and young people entering specialist CAMHS were being referred there incorrectly and ought to be helped in other parts of the system. By 2018, not enough has changed. The pieces of the jigsaw that need to be in place to support children and young people outside the most specialist settings are simply not there. Four years since the last inquiry, this is unacceptable. It must be addressed urgently by the Welsh Government.

As a committee, we believe that something drastic must be done at the preventative end of services. If we continue failing to provide emotional well-being, resilience and early intervention support, children and young people will continue suffering unnecessarily. It also means that the sustainability of more specialist mental health services will continue to be under threat.

So, what needs to happen? We think that a major step change is needed in the priority given to the emotional resilience and well-being of children and young people. We have called on the Government to make this a stated national priority. But words alone will not do. They need to be underpinned by the planning, resource and commitment to deliver real change. We think that ring-fenced resource is needed to make schools hubs of cross-sector and cross-professional support for emotional and mental well-being based in our communities. We also think that those who work with children and young people should be trained in emotional and mental health awareness, to tackle issues of stigma, promote good mental health, and enable signposting to services where necessary.

Reform of the curriculum in Wales offers a once-in-a-generation opportunity to embed well-being into our children’s lives, and schools are very well-placed to make a significant contribution to building an emotionally resilient population of young people. But they cannot do it alone. We are certainly not expecting teachers and other school staff to become experts in mental health. Support from other statutory and third sector bodies, most notably health, is crucial. The whole-school approach, where an ethos of good mental health runs through everything, needs to be a cross-sector responsibility and a genuine step change is needed to deliver it.

Our report makes one key recommendation and 27 in support of it. Taken together, we believe that these will deliver the step change that is needed to build a population of emotionally resilient and mentally healthy children and young people in Wales. They are detailed, demanding and ambitious, and I make no apologies for that. Our children and young people deserve our ambition to be high, and our demands to be significant on their behalf.

That is why I regrettably have to say that I and the committee are deeply disappointed with the Welsh Government’s response to our recommendations. Firstly, too many vital points have been rejected. Secondly, while many recommendations are accepted in principle, this is largely on the basis that the Welsh Government perceives that the things we have called for are already in place. Well, I say to the Welsh Government today: we do not agree with you. We do not believe sufficient attention has been given to the robust and comprehensive evidence that we have presented in our report. Finally, the Government’s response does not meet our expectation of, and demand for, a step change in approach. As a committee, we reject this response; it is not good enough. Neither the detailed evidence we’ve outlined, provided by a range of experts with significant experience in the field, nor the recommendations to which we have given considerable and serious thought have met with the acknowledgement, analysis and respect they deserve. The step change we have called for is not visible in this response as it stands. Our ambition is not met with the ambition we expect and demand of our Government. As such, today, I invite the Cabinet Secretaries to reflect again on their response, and to come back to us early in the autumn term with a renewed approach. Our committee will then use our time to explore these important issues with the Cabinet Secretaries in the forensic detail this important topic deserves.

Now, I do not wish to conclude my remarks on a negative note. Our report has been welcomed on a cross-sector, cross-party basis. It has been welcomed as an important step towards the transformative change that our children and young people deserve. It has been welcomed as a key part of the important journey that I and my fellow members of the committee are determined and committed to travel and complete in this Assembly. As our report says, this is a subject that touches us all, and an area in which we all have a responsibility and an ability to make change happen. We are unwilling to allow this vital issue to be handed on in a legacy report yet again to a successor committee in the sixth Assembly, saying, 'More needs to be done.' The time has now come to put mind over matter, and make the step change that is so urgently needed.