4. Will the First Minister make a statement on the Welsh Government's sustainable social services third sector grants scheme, please? OAQ53387

I thank the Member for the question, Llywydd. The Welsh Government’s sustainable social services third sector grant scheme provides £7 million each year to third sector organisations, delivering 32 projects that support vulnerable children, adults and older people in Wales. This grant is in place from April 2016 to March 2020. 

Thank you very much for the answer, Minister. Family Fund is a charity that provides grants to families on low incomes who are raising disabled or seriously ill children in Wales. Earlier this month, Family Fund announced that they had insufficient funding to help families and were no longer able to accept applications until April 2019. One reason for the predicament is that their funding from the Welsh Government's sustainable social services third sector grants scheme was cut in 2016 from £2.5 million a year to less than £2 million over the next three years. Does the First Minister accept that this funding cut is having a detrimental effect on projects and initiatives that support his Government's strategy for social services in Wales, especially for disabled and seriously ill children?

Llywydd, I want to recognise the important work that the Family Fund does in Wales and will go on doing in Wales as a result of the £0.5 million every year that it receives through the sustainable social services grant. Some Members here will recall that, back in 2016, we developed a set of rules that said that no one organisation could receive more than 10 per cent of the total amount available in that grant, and that's exactly what the Family Fund receives. It receives the absolute maximum amount available under the rules of the sustainable social services grant scheme and, indeed, in the first year of the scheme, we provided the fund with an additional £400,000 in that year in order to smooth the transition from the amount of money it previously received to the amount we are able to provide under the new grant arrangements.

And part of the reason why we decided that no one organisation could receive more than 10 per cent of the total sum available was because we wanted to allow other organisations with equally important projects to get funded as well. So, amongst the 31 organisations that the social services grant now funds are Learning Disability Wales, Carers Wales, the All Wales Forum of Parents and Carers of People with Learning Disabilities, and the Family Action programme, which provides practical, emotional and financial support to families. So, the work that the Family Fund does is very important, but we're now able to complement that with a whole range of other services working in the field that the Family Fund also operates.