1. What action is the Welsh Government taking to increase the provision of mental health support for young people? OAQ53395

Diolch, Llywydd. Actions to respond to the changing mental health needs of young people are being taken across the Welsh Government, in schools and colleges through the youth service, in the workplace and in the NHS, and through partnerships with third sector organisations and others.  

First Minister, last week the UK Government announced one of the largest mental health trials in the world to find out what can be done differently to improve young people's mental health and well-being. Three hundred and seventy English schools will take part in these trials, testing different approaches, while nine areas will trial new ways of ensuring children entering care get the mental health support that they need at that particularly vulnerable time. Schools in England will also deliver mental health education from 2020, something that Samaritans Cymru have said Wales should do also. I realise you're developing best practice and improving services, and I welcome that, but will you also be looking at these initiatives in England, to see where that evidence emerges and where their best practice emerges too, and also share what we develop here in Wales with our English colleagues?

Well, Llywydd, absolutely we will be keen to learn any lessons that there are from new initiatives elsewhere. It's part of the joy of devolution that we are able to try things differently in different parts of the United Kingdom and then to share the learning between us. As the Member says, we already have a whole-school approach to mental health here in Wales. Eleven thousand, five hundred and fifty eight children benefited from the school counselling service in the last year for which we have figures. And anything that we are able to share with others, from our experience, we are very keen to do. But, equally, it's always seemed to me that the sensible approach to devolution is to regard it, as we've said many times here, as a form of living laboratory in which experiments that are carried out elsewhere are available to us all, to draw any learning.

First Minister, I'm sure that you'll agree with me that it's very important, when we're designing services for anybody, but particularly for young people, that we hear their voices in that process. I'm sure that you will be aware that our Youth Parliament has already identified mental health and mental health services as one of their priorities. And I would like to invite you to commit today as a Government to working with the Youth Parliament, taking very seriously the suggestions that will come from them, and ensuring that, as we improve services for the mental health of our young people in Wales, those young people's voices are right at the centre. As they would say, 'Nothing about us without us'.

Well, Llywydd, I'm completely committed to developing our public services with the voice of the user in the centre of the way that we think about those services and try to develop them into the future. There are some groups in the population we have to work harder to make sure that their voices get heard, and the voices of young people who have a mental health condition are certainly in that category. I had the opportunity to meet with a group of young people using mental health services, brought to the Senedd by Helen Mary Jones, when I was the health Minister, and greatly valued that opportunity and the insights that those young people were able to provide to us. And in the field of mental health, that is particularly important, Llywydd, because we know from the most recent figures in England, for example, that there has been a six-fold reported increase amongst children and young people saying that they have a mental health condition over the last two decades. Yet, clinical diagnosed mental health conditions amongst that group of people is up only marginally. So, there is something to learn here from the message that young people are conveying to us when they report themselves having a mental health condition. And meeting those young people face to face is amongst the best ways that we can make sure that we learn those lessons.

We're always tempted to look far afield for the very best possible examples of how to improve our services in terms of child and adolescent mental health. But, of course, back in the autumn, the health Secretary, Vaughan Gething, and I were delighted to be in Jayne Bryant's constituency, attending the launch of £13.4 million of funding through the transformation fund at the Serennu Centre, for a more joined-up approach of child and adolescent mental health services. It's very place based, very community focused, drawing on all the resources, all the capabilities of that area, to support and nurture our young people. It's early days yet, but if that was to prove its success—and I have no doubt that it will, partly because of the work that's been done by the Children, Young People and Education Committee pushing this agenda—if it proves that it works, will the intention be then to roll that out not just across that region, not across south-east Wales, but actually to use that as the model that we roll out across Wales so that all of our children and young people have the very best mental health support?

Well, the model, Llywydd, that Huw Irranca-Davies points to is certainly one that we want to develop further, because it provides for a differentiated approach to mental health. We're absolutely used to differentiated approaches in physical health. If you have a cold—as I do—you need a paracetamol; if you have influenza, you need a different sort of answer; and if you've got pneumonia, then you could end up in an intensive care unit. We understand that different levels of need require a different sort of response. It was certainly one of the lessons in the Children, Young People and Education Committee's 'Mind over matter' report. Having a service of the sort that Huw Irranca-Davies has described, when there is a spectrum of different services available, able to provide that tailored support and tailored reaction to the need of our young people in the mental health field, is a model that we are very keen to see more generally used in Wales.