Dai, thank you very much, and on that very important point, I think this is why, curiously, the work in the adoption sector doesn't stand totally isolated from the wider issue of looked-after children and improving outcomes for all children. I think, in all of that wide piste of work, of paramount importance and statutorily underpinned, as well, by our belief in the rights of the child, is that the child comes first. He and I will sometimes, as all Assembly Members do, have some challenging conversations with birth parents who will say, 'Well, the best interests of the child are for them to be with me,' and yet the multi-agency professional advice is: 'Whilst we sympathise with the parents, actually the best place is somewhere else.' Sometimes, however, it is the other way, and with the right therapeutic support, with the right interventions wrapping around the family, solutions can be found where, safely, they can be retained in that family setting, with often quite intensive additional support, but it has to be in the best interests of the child. And that, curiously, is where the work beyond adoption but actually within the ministerial advisory group and the work streams that they have set in front of them, including one, which is—. In fact, their first work stream, probably, at the moment is safely reducing the numbers of children who come into looked-after care, but it's also the quality for those children who are then within care.

But adoption provides, we know, with the right support in place, a very, very good route into family life—with the right support in place, a very good return to family life, and something that can have a lasting and profound influence on that child and young person's development. In celebrating this week, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, it's heartening to see the success we are having, not only in increasing the numbers coming through, but also that those adoptions are largely successful—despite tribulations, very often, with children and young people with traumatic incidents in earlier life, who still need therapeutic interventions to help, and the family will need support as well. But it works, and people work through this.

Like him—he used the words that he stands 'in awe' of those people who go on this journey. Actually, many of them who go on this journey, they get so much out of it as well, but I equally stand in awe because of the challenge of doing this. No child being brought up is easy, but actually saying, 'We're going to take a child that we know is coming to us with complex issues that we're going to have to work through for years and years', and to do it, well, it is quite breathtaking. But, we want lots more people to come forward and do it as well.