5. How is the Welsh Government supporting volunteering and voluntary groups in Wales? OAQ55153

The Welsh Government provides core funding for the Wales Council for Voluntary Action and county voluntary councils to support volunteers and volunteering groups across Wales. This includes the Volunteering Wales grant that enables volunteering projects to recruit, support, train and place new volunteers.

The Family Fund has reported a further reduction in Welsh Government funding for 2020-21, despite the high levels of need they're seeing from families raising disabled children. The Wales Council of the Blind has warned that the Welsh Government's move away from the core-funding model to project funding means the sustainability of specifically Welsh umbrella organisations is under immediate threat.

Responding to the cash-flat settlement for the housing support grant in the Welsh Government's draft budget—a cut in real terms—Welsh Women's Aid, Cymorth Cymru and Community Housing Cymru warned that services preventing homelessness and supporting independent living had reached a tipping point, and a supported living service provider in north Wales told me the consequences would be increased pressure on the NHS, accident and emergency departments, and blue-light services. But the Welsh Government has ignored these calls and frozen the housing support grant within its final budget.

Why is the Welsh Government still pursuing these false economies, which see key early intervention and prevention services, delivered by the voluntary sector, starved of funding, adding millions to the cost pressure on statutory services, rather than learning from this, working with the sector, truly co-productively, to spend that money better, deliver more, and actually save more from the Welsh Government's budget too?

Well, I hope you will be joining us on these benches to give support to the final budget this afternoon, which actually does include, I think, over £6 million to the final budget approval. In terms of the Volunteering Wales grant, £1.3 million is allocated to be administered by the Wales Council for Voluntary Action.

I mentioned earlier on the code of practice funding for the third sector that forms part of the third sector scheme. I look forward to supporting the Welsh Government this afternoon, in terms of the budget, which has a priority on social justice, housing need and sustaining the services that are so important to people, which includes volunteering. But I have to say, we would be in a much better place if we hadn't suffered the 10 years of austerity as a result of the UK Conservative Government.

Thank you, Deputy Minister.