2. Statement by the First Minister: Coronavirus (COVID-19)

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:43 pm on 1 April 2020.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:43, 1 April 2020

[Inaudible.]—about our colleagues in Gwent in the health service and the wider public services there for everything they are doing, and they are at the forefront of the epidemic in Wales. We think very much of them.

In relation to online shopping, we are in discussions with supermarkets. Lesley Griffiths, my colleague, has had discussions with them this week and we go on doing that. The first port of call has to be to make sure that shielded individuals who cannot and should not leave their own homes for an extended period come first. Where there are people outside that group who are in a similar sort of position, they've got no family or friends or other networks they can rely on, then using the local authority hub as a clearing house to put volunteers in touch with them is the next step for them.

Can I echo what Lynne Neagle has said about vulnerable children? Vulnerability, as she said, is on a very wide spectrum, from some very sinister and very awful attempts by people who are just out to exploit children to use this emergency as a way of perpetrating their ways of behaving, through to children whose families just struggle to look after them in the way that they themselves would like to do. So, I said in my statement that Julie Morgan has been in discussion with and issued fresh guidance to Flying Start and Families First services to make sure that we use all the different safe means that we can to make sure that those families continue to get a service, even in these most difficult of times.

School does remain a place where vulnerable children are able to get help. As Lynne, I know, will recall, there was a fear over one weekend that large numbers of children would present themselves at school, and in fact it's about 1 per cent of the school population who are in school today. Now, the other side of Easter, we have to prepare for what might be a different set of circumstances, where more people are ill and more people need to rely on that service. That's why we're in discussions with the teacher unions and with local authorities—hugely appreciative of the efforts they're already making, but to be prepared for the way that service may need to be adapted the other side of Easter if we are facing even more challenging circumstances.