Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Housing and Local Government – in the Senedd at 3:05 pm on 17 July 2019.
Yes, I very much welcome that approach, and we do have some very innovative schemes right across Wales, where local authorities have really worked very hard to keep services going in a range of different ways, through third sector and other organisations, local community organisations, town and community councils and so on. There's a range of very creative ways forward. The youth work strategy is in fact in the portfolio of the Minister for Education. I'm very pleased that the youth work strategy for Wales was launched in June of this year, and what we're looking to do with that strategy is to develop a greater understanding of the services in Wales to ensure a more consistent offer, grounded in a youth work approach—so, learning from examples such as that, because they are patchy across Wales, because local authorities are very pushed, where the service is not statutory, to give some of the funding. I am very pleased that more than £10 million has been made available via the youth support grant to support that activity, including £2.5 million for mental health and emotional well-being in young people, and £3.7 million to address youth homelessness in particular, from the other part of my portfolio. Because we know, and I agree with Angela Burns entirely, that youth work has an important approach to play in ensuring that the personal, social and emotional development of young people in Wales stays on track to make sure that people are able to become the best people they can be. So, I agree entirely with the sentiment, but I do think that having that vital core funding can mean life or death, and so, actually, there has been a real problem with austerity cutbacks in non-statutory services, because that vital core funding has been removed, and then the service really struggles to get the kinds of support that she has highlighted.