5. Will the First Minister make a statement on Welsh Government policies to tackle youth homelessness? OAQ55173

I thank the Member for that question. The Welsh Government has invested an extra £20 million in this financial year in tackling youth homelessness. In carrying out that work, we work closely with partners across Government, the public and third sectors in support of that aim. Tackling youth homelessness is also informed by our engagement with the End Youth Homelessness campaign.

I thank the First Minister for that answer. I wonder if you would join with me in congratulating the Salvation Army, as the lead agency joining with Taff Housing Association and the Church Army, to create the Cardiff young persons' supported accommodation partnership, which was launched in the Pierhead last week. This partnership has been commissioned by Cardiff Council, I think as an instance of best practice, as a system-change partnership that understands that each young person has individual needs and presenting styles. We need supported accommodation to respond to many of these and 106 units will be planned in Cardiff. And at its heart is the concept of no eviction into homelessness, which I think is essential, and offering young people influence and control over their housing needs. So, I do congratulate all those, including Cardiff Council, for coming together. Is this not the sort of partnership approach that you should be encouraging all over Wales?

Can I thank the Member for that supplementary question and for the way in which, over so many years, he has championed the cause of young people in distress in so many aspects of their lives? And seeing his announcement last week—his contribution on these matters will be missed in this Senedd in the future. 

I want to agree with what he has said, of course. Taff Housing Association is in my own constituency of Cardiff West, and my office is not many hundreds of yards away from theirs, so we have a very good opportunity there to hear of the work that they do in bringing together the physical response to youth homelessness with the care and support needs that young people who find themselves in that awful position often need as well. And the scheme to which he refers is a very good example of that, making sure that young people have a decent place to live, but that they don't feel abandoned in it, and that they know that they will not be isolated and alone, but that they will have a network of organisations that they can turn to so that the difficult business of looking after yourself and being in charge of your own destiny—. Most of us are never on our own; we have families and others we can turn to, and we know that young people who find themselves homeless often don't have any of that. So, putting those things in place through the Salvation Army, the Church Army and the things that Taff Housing Association can do fills the whole of that gap. I commend, as he did, the work that they do. The point he made towards the end of his question about that principle of no eviction into homelessness is an absolutely central one that I know my colleague Julie James, as the Minister for housing, is emphasising in all the discussions that she has with social housing providers in Wales.

First Minister, when it comes to tackling youth homelessness, surely we have to take an evidence-based approach. We know that, in Finland, the Housing First scheme has achieved tremendous results since it was launched over a decade ago, and the Scottish scheme, which was launched last year, has already housed 216 people. Now, that scheme can be particularly effective for care leavers when their support from social services drops off a cliff at 18. I'm aware that the Welsh Government has funded pilot schemes through fantastic organisations like Pobl group in Newport, in Ammanford and in Rhondda Cynon Taf. I hear from the sector that these schemes are achieving some brilliant results, as we would expect. But, First Minister, given that we already know that Housing First works, I would question whether we need to pilot it here. Shouldn't we go ahead and roll it out over Wales with sustainable funding so that we can support homeless people and those at risk of homelessness when they're young, and at all ages, all over the country to get into safe accommodation, not just those people who are fortunate enough to live within the current pilot scheme areas?

Llywydd, I agree, of course, about the importance of evidence in this area. I think it's just a bit unfair to describe what is happening in Housing First for young people as a pilot. Of the £4.8 million that we have put into the youth homeless innovation fund, there are now six Housing First for young people schemes in operation already, and they're already in seven of the 22 local authorities in Wales. So, I think we've already gone beyond a simple pilot.

Of course, we want to learn from, as Delyth Jewell has said, the evidence of those first seven local authority actions, because while the Finnish experience is compelling, one of the things we have surely learnt is that you cannot simply pick something up that has happened, even in one part of Wales and drop it into another part of Wales and think it will just take root in the same way. We are adapting the Finnish experience and evidence so that it works in the Welsh context. That's what those six schemes are doing, and then, of course, we will want to learn from that to make sure that it is extended beyond that into other parts of Wales.