So, it is important not just for Members but also for autistic people, their families and carers that the Welsh Government is transparent about the extent and quality of current service provision. That's why I published the second annual report about the Welsh Government's autism strategy. It provides clear information on the delivery of our commitments in the autism delivery plan. That report summarises the progress that we are making against each of the objectives in the delivery plan, and alongside that, the national autism team has also published an annual report demonstrating the range of their success in delivering on their annual work plan, and the report clearly shows the support for the roll-out of the integrated autism service. There are now strong partnerships in place, additional awareness raising and training is taking place, and there is a real emphasis on the involvement of autistic people in their work. That involvement was evidenced at the recent national autism conference for adults, which was co-produced by autistic people. I am very pleased to say there was positive feedback for autistic people who participated, though I'd recognise this is a group in our society who have regularly told me that they can feel invisible and that their needs can be overlooked.

The work of the national team does, however, demonstrate that better really is possible. To continue the national team's work, I've agreed funding of over £145,000 to support the delivery of their work plan for this year, and I agree with the sentiments behind the motion that the reforms we're making must meet autistic people's needs and improve their individual outcomes.

Since 2015, we've taken targeted action through the children and young people programme. Its neurodevelopmental work stream now has dedicated neurodevelopmental teams in each area and we've established national service standards and referral pathways. As we near the end of this programme, we're working to establish proper legacy arrangements to ensure that the progress made in neurodevelopmental services continues in future years and to ensure transparency in the state of our progress, Public Health Wales will publish over the summer a report that reflects the service's position against each of their agreed service standards. It will make recommendations on where future developments should focus.

We must also ensure that services are supported to achieve the 26-week waiting time standard for assessment. Health boards have begun reporting data to the Welsh Government and we're working with them to make sure that data quality returns are up to a standard to enable us to publish them as part of a national data set. And so I'm happy to remake the commitment to do so. The neurodevelopmental services are also working to develop richer and outcome-based monitoring arrangements. Those will reflect improvements in individual outcomes.

And for the integrated autism service, all seven regions are now open and we're implementing an outcome-focused data monitoring system supported by Data Cymru. This data will provide information on how each service is delivering on the agreed service standards and include returns of parent, carer and autistic adults' feedback.

Each service is also using the outcomes star approach to measure the distance travelled by each individual supported through the service. In this way, we will have a clear picture on how the integrated autism service is benefiting people seeking support. The data collector has been piloted to test quality and consistency and we will make it publicly available as soon as is possible.

Earlier this year, we published the independent evaluation of the delivery of the integrated autism service. It recognises the commitment by health boards and local authorities to work together to launch the service in each area of Wales. I'm supporting further evaluation of the service and the autism strategy this year.

The integrated autism service is funded to at least 2021. I've made that decision with a risk against future budgets, and during that time we'll continue to support and monitor its development. I will be in a position to consider future funding once we do have some clarity from the UK Government on our settlement for 2021 and beyond.

So, we are making real progress, but I know from speaking with and listening to autistic people that there is still a distance to travel and I have never tried to claim otherwise. We'll continue to seek feedback on our reforms and to address real barriers to improvement. So, we're listening to stakeholder concerns gathered through evaluation and through the scrutiny of the autism Bill and the recent consultation on the autism code.

My officials recently met with representatives from royal colleges to discuss continuing pressures on health services. And those workforce challenges are real, and they're not easily solvable, but we have a plan and we are making more progress. I want to see the pace and scale of that improvement continue to increase, and to be transparent about the progress that we have made and the challenges that still remain. So, I've commissioned an additional review on the continuing barriers to reducing assessment waiting times and alignment of autism and neurodevelopmental services, and, again, I will publish that report as soon as it is available. I expect it to be so over the summer. 

It confirms to me, though, the concerns that I've heard directly from families and autism support groups about demand and capacity in assessment services for children and adults. It is evident that there is a clear need to understand in detail how the pressures impact upon current services, and by that I mean autism services and related mental health and children's services. So, we'll undertake this work with our partners over the next year. I will provide more detail on our plans once they're finalised. 

Finally, we are progressing our autism improvement programme with the delivery of an autism code of practice under the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 and the National Health Service (Wales) Act 2006. Earlier this year, we consulted on our proposals. We held seven engagement events across Wales with the autistic community and we received 65 written responses. I published the consultation summary of responses last week and I'm pleased that, in general, there is good support for our approach. Over the next few months, we will continue to work with stakeholders, including, of course, autistic people themselves, to develop the code. This will include examining all of the recommendations that have been made through committee reports, our evaluation, recent consultations, and to map our priorities for action.

We intend to publish the draft code of practice for public consultation by the end of this calendar year. It is vital that the autism code that we introduce is deliverable, so we have to ensure that the services expected to deliver the duties it contains are equipped to do the job without detriment to other services that other people will continue to rely upon. The work that we are embarking on now will inform future decisions on the longer term funding and reconfiguration of services for people with neurodevelopmental conditions and autistic people. I remain fully committed, as I have stated on a number of occasions in the past, to ensuring that services continue to improve and to the long-term investment that I recognise will be needed to make that happen.