The new 'Together for Mental Health' delivery plan, which will be published on Friday this week, positions preventing suicide and self-harm as a key action, making it a priority for the next three years. Actions include the development and implementation of a bereavement support pathway for suicide, as well as a commitment to further improve access to valuable resources, such as the 'Help is at Hand' resource that has been referred to several times today.

This will build upon the work we've already put in place to improve the emotional well-being of our children and young people. Our recent work included extending the schools in-reach pilot to expand capacity, enabling specialist staff to work with more schools, and publishing new guidance on suicide and self-harm. The guidance aims to support teachers and other professionals on early intervention and self-management of self-harm and suicidal thoughts when they arise. The whole-school approach forms a key element to our focus on prevention and ensuring early access to support. As has been mentioned, last week, the First Minister attended the launch of Papyrus, a particular organisation for the prevention of young suicide in Wales, reaffirming cross-Government support in this area.

Within this financial year, we've also supported a range of regional suicide prevention programmes, including innovative approaches such as working with rugby teams to encourage men to talk about mental health, and providing additional bereavement counselling sessions. At the end of the month, I will update the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee on our actions to deliver our response to their 'Everybody's Business' suicide prevention report, and that will include our work to improve bereavement services in Wales. We know that access to good quality bereavement care is of primary importance. It helps with a healthy grieving process for the bereaved and should include actively following up on all those who have been bereaved, even if support is initially refused.

The bereavement services scoping review taken forward by the end of life care board at Marie Curie in Cardiff University was published in December, and again referred to in the debate, mapping existing support, ranging from signposting through to specialist counselling, and identifying areas where further resourcing is needed. The scope of the report covered the broad range of bereavement support, including suicide. It highlights gaps and challenges in bereavement service provision, and raises a number of considerations for development and improvement. These are centred on the need to develop a national framework for the delivery of bereavement care in Wales. This would then facilitate the prioritisation of bereavement support at organisational and regional levels, and help to provide equity and access to appropriate types and levels of support that are responsive to local need.

A national delivery framework would also support the establishment of clear referral pathways, approaches to risk and need assessment, training for staff and volunteers, and the development of a directory of the available bereavement provision. Finally, a national bereavement framework will support improvements in how services are evaluated and assessed, and standards could then be further developed for use as audit and quality improvement. To take the development of the framework forward, we're in the process of recruiting a dedicated project manager. We have asked the national clinical lead for end of life care, Dr Idris Baker, to establish a national bereavement steering group to support this work. As many of you will know, Dr Baker has considerable knowledge and experience in bereavement care.

As an interim measure, I've recently agreed additional in-year funding to strengthen existing suicide bereavement support provided by the third sector. Five organisations have been supported. In addition, Welsh Government regional funding is being used to create a new bereavement support service for north Wales. I'll make a written statement before the half-term recess to outline our longer-term plans.

I can also confirm that we have now appointed a national suicide prevention co-ordinator for Wales who will be vital in joining up approaches and leading the development and implementation of new action to prevent suicide and self-harm in a much more co-ordinated and effective way. The co-ordinator will be supported by three regional posts to deliver on action plans across Wales. The inclusion of people with lived experience will be fundamental to the development of the postvention pathway. A key focus for the national co-ordinator will be the development of that postvention pathway as part of our broader work to improve bereavement support. The national advisory group on suicide and self-harm are now planning three regional stakeholder workshops to inform that work.

I hope this helps to demonstrate the importance we continue to attach to this agenda, and outline action that we are taking, both to prevent suicide and self-harm, and also to improve bereavement support. I recognise the ambition of Members across the Chamber for further pace in delivering that improvement. I will include more details on timescales for the bereavement pathway in the written statement that I aim to issue before half-term recess.