Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. I'm very pleased to have the opportunity to respond to this debate today, and I'd like to thank the Conservatives for bringing this debate to the Chamber. I think there's been a lot of interest and a lot of very important points made. So, thank you for that.

I first want to acknowledge the very helpful work of the Public Accounts Committee and its inquiry into care-experienced children and young people. I also want to acknowledge the work of the ministerial advisory group, very ably chaired by David Melding, who I'm pleased is in the Chamber today. And following on from his announcement on the weekend, I'd really like to pay tribute to David for his huge contribution to children in Wales. I've worked with David—we've worked together on this issue—for many years, and his contribution to children in Wales is immeasurable. So, thank you, David.

While I'm pleased with the progress of the Outcomes for Children programme, I think it's very important that we do not be complacent. Statistics from March 2019 showed that the number of children looked after by local authorities continued to increase by 7 per cent on the previous year, and, obviously, an increase is disappointing, but it is very important to note that for the second year running the number of children starting to become looked after has decreased.

It's very important that children have stable placements. The 2018 and 2019 data show that 9 per cent of children had three or more placement moves. These figures have actually remained stable over a period of time, and I think we've just got to recognise that, sometimes, placement moves are necessary and are in the best interest, but we want children to have as much stability as possible.

This area of work is complex and we are working with partners across the whole system, and many of those areas have been mentioned today, including the local authority, social services, the judiciary, health, education, housing and the third sector and all these organisations have a significant role in helping to keep families safely together and reducing the need for children to come into care.

The motion makes a number of calls on Government, so I will address these in turn—firstly, to review local authorities' reduction expectation plans. We already do this through our peer learning and feedback group. Local authorities' progress in the first six months showed that the looked-after rate has slowed. While there was an increase during this period, it was at a rate of 1.3 per cent, and previous years' annual increases have been around 7 per cent. I want to caution that these are unvalidated numbers, but I do hope that this trend will continue. That is for the first six months.

The reasons for increases in the looked-after population are, indeed, complex, as Siân Gwenllian said in her amendment, but I'm absolutely in no doubt that the First Minister's request for local authorities to set reduction targets has focused minds and encouraged a whole-system approach to prevention. And we are on that journey of improvement and must sustain momentum. As I've said before in the Chamber, the targets are the targets put forward by the local authorities, there no penalties, and they are only part of a whole-system approach.

In terms of foster carers, we continue to help local authorities recruit more foster carers through the national fostering framework, and this year we provided an additional £100,000 to progress its marketing strategy. Similarly, we're striving to make adoption services in Wales the best they can be. In 2019-20 we provided unprecedented funding of £3.2 million for local authorities and voluntary adoption agencies to improve adoption support, to be delivered through the adoption support framework for Wales. I attended an adoption symposium yesterday in the Temple of Peace, and although everybody acknowledged there is a long way to go, certainly there is a feeling that now the Welsh Government has invested in very important areas of post-adoption support—and some of the comments made today about parents having to struggle post adoption—we are definitely trying to address that. I was on that first inquiry that looked into adoption, and I would say that there has been improvement since then, but there's still a long way to go. [Interruption.] Yes.