Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:53 pm on 11 February 2020.
Thank you very much, and you are right, what we're not trying to do here is to control behaviour within the family. We do understand that we're in a sensitive area here. So, what we're trying to do is to motivate, to help people to make their own decisions, and ensure the resources and the evaluation in terms of what works is available to them, and that we help in that area. There is a lot of research that has been done in this area, but what's important now is that we share that work and we do more nudge theory with these people. We know, to a certain extent, certain things that do work, but is there more that we can do?
And that's why it's vital—. You mentioned that it's difficult to change a language once you've set up that habit, and that is true, I think. And that's why it's so important that we start before children are born. That's why we collaborate before that with midwives. And that way of working has taken us quite a long way already, but evidently there is a cohort that we haven't reached yet, and it's important that we look at that.
So, why are people not transmitters? Well, that's what we're trying to find out here. You've mentioned that a lack of confidence is a part of that, and maybe particularly if they haven't been brought up through the medium of Welsh, but they've learned the language at school. It's interesting, maybe they don't have the vocabulary for very young children. Do they know how to sing to the children when they're very small and so forth? That's the kind of thing we have to ensure that we provide.
Another thing, from the research we've seen, is that, often, there isn't a conscious decision about which language to speak. One of the things we're trying to do is to have people to think about this. What's interesting in the research is that they do talk about which school their child goes to, so if they're sending them to a Welsh school, but they don't have a discussion about which language they speak at home.
And you are right, work has been done in this area over the years. There was Twf, and then that has become Cymraeg for Kids. One of the things that we've done in planning this new policy is evaluate Cymraeg for Kids to see what works, and that has fed into this programme. What we're hoping to do here is place a greater focus on the fact that what we want to see is the transmission of the language within families, and that that is established within the family rather than something that's school based. So, the focus is very consciously on families.
In terms of the time this is going to take, we think maybe a decade would be the timeframe for this. In terms of the funding, Cymraeg for Kids received £750,000 this year. What we'd expect, as a result of this consultation, is bids for more funding in this area. So, we'll have to see what comes back and what projects that are not funded now will be funded in the future.