Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:22 pm on 21 May 2019.
Thank you for raising this particular issue, which is, obviously, concerning. I will ask the Minister for health to write to you to provide the reassurances and the peace of mind that you are seeking in terms of the Welsh Government's approach to supporting children and the mental health of young people.
We do take a broad approach to improving the mental health of young people, from prevention and early intervention through to improving access to specialist services, and we've committed an additional £7.1 million this year to support this approach. Of course, we have our Healthy Child Wales programme and our investment in work on adverse childhood experiences, which forms part of the focus on our early years support. The Minister for health and the education Minister will be jointly giving evidence to the Children, Young People and Education Committee after recess, and that demonstrates, really, the whole-of-Government approach that we are taking here.
But, in relation to specialist child and adolescent mental health services, we do expect 80 per cent of children to be seen within the 28-days-of-referral target. To ensure that health boards are able to meet that target consistently, from March 2018 we've provided an additional £300,000 to improve access by running additional clinic sessions. Over the last two years, performance has improved significantly, with fewer young people waiting excessive times to access support, but, clearly, we all know there's much more to be done in this area.