There are lots of buzz words in the report—'empowering', 'rights', 'consult', 'engage'—but I'm actually very disappointed with the report. And what I find most disappointing, indeed unacceptable, to be frank, is that there is not a single mention of parental alienation—not a single mention in the whole report. Now, parental alienation is where a parent is alienated from a child. It can happen to dads, it can happen to mothers. I know this because I see so many of them in my office, week in, week out, almost. It's a form of emotional abuse of children, it's a form of child abuse that is accepted and, more to the point of this report, this is evidence that it's a form of child abuse that is, in fact, ignored by the very people who should be doing something about it. 

If you are a child who has been alienated from a good and loving parent, you are more likely to live in poverty, you are more likely to do less well in education, you are more likely to suffer mental illness, you are more likely to self-harm, you are more likely to abuse substances, you are more likely to have difficulties yourself in forming relationships as an adult. I think that's the omission of this huge issue in Wales and, indeed, the UK. I think it's a staggering dereliction of duty and it's also irresponsible to not talk about this. 

There's lots of mention of the convention—the United Nations convention on the rights of the child. To be perfectly frank, in Wales it's not worth the paper that it's written on, because you have organisations in Wales, publicly funded, who facilitate and work with people who are indulging in parental alienation or carrying that form of abuse out. And there are organisations that really should not receive public money until they have policies in this area, but they have no policies because it is ignored and, indeed, accepted. 

A lot is said nowadays about the voice of children, and I want to flag up the voices of children in care, and I've mentioned this several times in this Chamber. I mentioned it last time I was speaking on these matters. There are so many children in Wales who do not want to be in care. They want to be with their parents and they are simply not listened to. This area is not being addressed and really this should feature again in this report, but it doesn't.

I'm really concerned as well that when children in care allege that they're being abused, they're simply not being listened to. I said this last time; I'll say it again now because we're a few weeks further on: there's a case that disturbs me greatly that cannot be dealt with by the children's commissioner because it's an individual case. I have extreme concern at the way the police have dealt with this matter. We are now in December. I have been trying to get a meeting with the most senior officer in South Wales Police in public protection since July, and I have been unable to organise or have this meeting. That really tells me that South Wales Police do not take child abuse or alleged child abuse seriously. That's a point that I want to put on the record, and it's a point that we should all be talking about as we go towards the police and crime commissioner elections in May next year.

As I said, I think it's a huge, huge gap in this report, that an issue that affects so many children, so many mothers, so many fathers, so many grandmothers, so many grandfathers, so many families is not even mentioned in the report. To check that—I'll finish now—I even went through the document with a search to see if 'parental' was in there; it wasn't in the document. 'Alienation'—I typed that in; it wasn't in the document, just in case I'd missed it reading through, and I've read it through several times, and very disappointing. Diolch yn fawr.