Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:03 pm on 3 March 2020.
I thank the First Minister for that reply. The First Minister will know that the incidence of self-harm is massively enhanced by those who suffer adverse experiences in childhood. That can be neglect or it can be abuse—whether it's physical abuse, emotional abuse or sexual abuse—or household dysfunction, which can include all sorts of things, like things that happen in a broken home or the imprisonment of close family members and even things like divorce. Public Health Wales has produced figures that show that those who suffer four or more of these adverse childhood experiences are 10 times more likely to have felt suicidal or to have suffered from self-harm, and where there are six or more of these adverse childhood experiences, then the risk of suicide is enhanced by a massive 35 times.
He'll be aware that the WAVE Trust is a charity that deals with these kinds of problems, and that they have proposed the introduction of a target for the Welsh Government to reduce the incidence of ACEs by 70 per cent by 2030. Every single Member of this Assembly, apart from Government Ministers, has signed up to this—with the exception of the Minister for Education, who has signed up to it—does he think that we're all wrong? Would it not be an advantage to able to have a target? Because although one accepts the Government don't always meet their targets, it's often not their fault that they fail to meet them. But nevertheless, a target is important to aim at and gives a greater urgency to the solution of the problems that we all want to deal with.