Now, I'm all for prevention and early intervention, and appreciate that many of you are too, such as the ministerial advisory group, which has reinforced moves towards prevention. Importantly, the Public Accounts Committee's report highlighted that there is an opportunity to better use preventative spending to secure better long-term outcomes for our children. However, there is still room for improvement. For example, whilst £5 million was given to 22 local authorities to provide edge-of-care services in 2017-18, the justice commission in Wales has been sceptical about the success of the expenditure to date. Concern has also been raised by the Association of Directors of Social Services, they say the limited moneys councils have available is increasingly being taken up with the provision of the urgent help for children and families already at crisis point, leaving very little to invest in early intervention. Personally, I commend the success of the Troubled Families programme launched by the UK Govenrment in 2012. It has seen a 32 per cent difference in the proportion of looked-after children. As Professor Jonathan Portes of King's College London stated, the

'most...significant impact of the programme is to reduce the number of children going into care'.

For those children who do enter the care system, the Welsh Government has a long way to go on improving life chances for these children. In terms of education, at key stage 2, just 58.3 per cent of looked-after children achieve the core subject indicator, compared with an 87.8 per cent average across Wales. At key stage 4, just 10.9 per cent achieve the core subject indicator, compared with roughly 60 per cent overall. Those facts come despite our current First Minister having co-published the 'Raising the ambitions and educational attainment of children who are looked after in Wales: Strategy' in 2016. Progress may be achieved by considering the Skolfam initiative in Sweden and introducing a looked-after children premium. 

Now, in terms of mental health, NSPCC found that looked-after children are five times more likely to suffer from any mental health disorder, and nine times more likely to have a behavioural disorder. And, a recent study by Cardiff University showed some truly shocking facts about young people in residential care, such as: they have the lowest mental well-being score; 56 per cent have been exposed to bullying; and a greater percentage of them have been found to be drunk and used cannabis in the last month than children not in care. Now, whilst the Welsh Government has committed further investment into the emotional and mental health of all children and young people, I cannot overlook the fact that we in the CYPE Committee felt it was unclear. We need to know how much exactly is being targeted at looked-after children specifically. How is this being monitored in terms of its impact on delivering the 'Mind over matter' recommendations? In terms of a brighter future, findings by the National Audit Office and the Children's Society highlight that care leavers are at increased risk of homelessness and poverty. 

Wales can and should facilitate better futures for our children than this, and there are steps that we can take. For example, again, the Public Accounts Committee's report recommended that all care-experienced children are routinely made aware of their right to an advocate and provided with clear information about how to access the range of available advocacy services. These are not big asks, but they need to be in place. However, TGP Cymru recently found that only 5 per cent to 10 per cent of children's homes run by the private sector have residential visiting advocacy arrangements in place. So, we should also act on the calls made by the Children's Society to help ensure that Welsh local authorities are identifying European national young children in and who have left their care, so that they can be supported with securing their status or citizenship if required. Similarly, we need to support placements. The Fostering Network has reported that Wales needs another 550 foster families to ensure that children get to the right home first. If we do not achieve this, some children face being split up from their own siblings. Local authorities have started joining the recruiting challenge, but your Government needs to be doing more to assist them.

The same is true in relation to adoptive parents, which does bring me to my final point. I have a constituent who has one foster child and one adopted child. She desperately, passionately wants to incorporate the foster child into the family and become an adopted parent. Upon asking her whether this was going to happen she said 'no', and this was simply due to the significant decrease in support that would follow. Quite often, when people move from the fostering model to the adoptive model, you're very much on your own to get on with it, and it doesn't work like that. The support should still be there for adoptive parents to keep those families together, and I've actually dealt with two other cases where siblings have potentially faced being separated because adopting siblings can be quite intensive in terms of support requirements. There is no duty on anybody to support adoptive parents. So, I ask you, Deputy Minister, to really look at this and let's try and get more of our children, where needed, into adoptive parent situations.    

The situation for looked-after children in Wales can be quite depressing, but I have hope for the future, and I have hope for these children. Working together cross-party here and elsewhere, I actually believe that our motion today speaks common sense, it is what is required, and it would be really refreshing if the Welsh Government could support our motion today. Thank you. Diolch.