Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:53 pm on 18 June 2019.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:53, 18 June 2019

Well, Llywydd, as it happens, I don't agree with the Member. I take a very different view to the one, I think, I've heard him say about the need for tier 4 services in child and adolescent mental health. I definitely don't agree that we need more centres. What we need is to minimise the number of young people who end up needing a service of that sort. So, for me, the test of success is not that we have more beds that we need to take young people into, but that we have more community services, more crisis intervention services, and that we are able to move young people down the escalator of intervention.

So, I am very comfortable that we have a centre in north Wales and a centre in south Wales at Tŷ Llidiard. I think it was exactly the right decision to withdraw Welsh patients from the third centre to which the Member refers because that service was not fit-for-purpose and did not meet the needs of young people. The number of young people from Wales who we place outside Wales is falling. It's been falling over recent years, and I want to see it fall further, because while I'm willing to accept that there will be a small number of children from Wales whose needs are so exceptional and so significant that you have to find a service so specialist that a population of 3 million people cannot support it, I want to see as many young people from Wales looked after closer to their families and closer to their homes. That means bringing back children who are looked after in England to tier 4 services, and it means moving tier 4 services for young people in Wales back into the community and closer to people's homes.

So, I agree it's a really important area, and it's very good to have a chance to discuss it on the floor of the Assembly, but my solution to it is the opposite of the Member's solution—not adding more beds and putting more resource there, it's pulling people, de-escalating, strengthening community services and using those 27 beds only when we're certain that that is essential.