The ministerial advisory group has representation from all senior leaders and organisations with an involvement in children’s services. The group has been instrumental in advising me on, and co-producing, the improving outcomes for children work programme, and I'm pleased our partners are actively involved in this work. In fact, I attended the last ministerial advisory group meeting, and I could see again that this collaborative way of working continues to be a real strength of the group.

So, what have we achieved? Well, you will remember last year we invested £9 million to support care-experienced children. I'd like to tell you some of the headline outcomes on how that money was used by local authorities. Over 1,900 care-experienced children across Wales have received funds via our £1 million St David's Day fund, to support their transition to adulthood and to independence. Our £5 million investment in local authority edge-of-care services meant that local authorities helped over 3,600 children to remain within the family unit, by working with more than 2,000 families. We now have edge-of-care services in all local authorities in Wales. Welsh Government funding has led to the establishment of regional Reflect services. During the past year, these services have supported 150 young parents whose children have been placed in the care system with a wide range of emotional and practical issues. This is a popular service, and we expect to see the number of referrals rise significantly in the coming years. We also provided £1 million to extend the provision of personal advisers, so that all care leavers up to the age of 25 are offered a personal adviser, regardless of circumstances. As a result, an additional 20 personal advisers have been recruited, and the extended offer has been taken up by more than 500 care leavers. And finally, care leavers have been helped to access opportunities in education, employment and training, with 70 young people now participating in a local authority work placement or a traineeship scheme. These are real, tangible outcomes that are having a direct and positive impact on the lives of children and young people.

We have progressed other areas of work. For example, in May this year, we published research on placement outcomes for children after a final care order. This important research showed that over three quarters of the children in the study experienced a high level of placement stability as well as identifying other positive experiences of care. We have also developed national standards for independent reviewing officers and for independent visitors to ensure there is quality and consistency of service. And we funded the first year of the implementation of the national fostering framework. I am very pleased that my colleague the Cabinet Secretary for Finance last week published a consultation on exempting all care leavers from paying council tax so that we have a consistent approach right across Wales.

This is all good progress, but there is still more to do. Before the summer, I asked for the work programme to be accelerated and intensified, to expedite delivery against the key challenges, including those that were identified in 'Care Crisis Review'. As a result, the improving outcomes for children work programme has been refreshed. This third phase of the programme continues much of the important work that's already in train, but it places more emphasis on reducing the need for care by providing effective, preventative, early support to families, as well as ensuring therapeutic support to children and families is intrinsic throughout the programme. To inform this phase, my officials have carried out an appreciative inquiry across six local authorities. The inquiry highlighted good preventative social work and family support being delivered by local authorities. All of the local authorities demonstrated integrated care systems where multi-agency teams provided timely support to families so crises could be de-escalated or avoided, thereby helping families to stay safely together. To illustrate this, one example has been the use of family group meetings. This is a family-centered approach that enables children, young people, as well as wider family members, to participate and own solutions that will improve their circumstances. This is very much in keeping with our co-production approach, which is central to our Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014. Investment in such preventative and early intervention approaches really does realise savings in the long term.

As part of the draft budget proposals announced by the Cabinet Secretary for Finance for 2019-20, an additional £30 million has been allocated to regional partnership boards to help strengthen these integration arrangements. Today, I'm pleased to announce that £15 million of this funding will be allocated to progress our shared ambition of reducing the need for children to be in care. This is an exciting opportunity to make a real difference to a whole-system change. 

I would like local authorities, third sector organisations and health boards to work together to use this fund flexibly and creatively across their regions. My expectation is that this money focuses on early intervention and preventative services for families in need of help and assistance, building on the approaches we already know help families avoid crisis situations. For those children and young people in care, I want to ensure we have in place the therapeutic services needed to help them successfully reunite with their families, where appropriate. 

Before I finish, I want to remind everyone that it is National Safeguarding Week. I'm really pleased that the Welsh Government is working with Stop It Now! Wales to launch a new campaign, which will help encourage the people of Wales to play their part in stopping child sexual abuse.