6. Will the Minister make a statement on continuity of care for young people progressing from child and adolescent to adult mental health services? OQ55780

I fully recognise the importance of a smooth transition and continuity of care for young people moving from child and adolescent mental health services and into adult services. The actions we are taking to improve transitions are set out in the recently published 'Together for Mental Health' delivery plan for 2019-22.

I'm grateful, Minister. We're all very aware of the difficulties facing young people, and, in many ways, the last few months has only sought to emphasise this. Over the years, in Blaenau Gwent, I've had to support a number of families who've found it very difficult to access mental health support for people who are adolescents who are moving between the two services. In the last week we've been trying to support a family who've been through a really heartbreaking experience, whereby the services they were receiving from the children's mental health team were very, very good, but most services stop, of course, at age 18, and the young person involved was not able to have the support that they required as they moved into adult mental health care. It is absolutely unacceptable that we're unable to provide seamless care for our young people in this way. I hope, Minister, that in the time you have available—and I know, in answer to an earlier question from Andrew R.T. Davies, you were very clear about the position of young people as being a priority for you—you'll be able to look not simply at the services themselves but transition between services and the linkage between different services to ensure that young people have the support they require seamlessly as they grow up and seamlessly between different service providers. 

Diolch, Alun. I think there is an acknowledgment in the 'Together for Mental Health' report that, actually, there is a need to do some work on this, and we're certainly aware that we need to do better in this area. Just to be clear that during the first phase of the pandemic, all CAMHS services paused that transition of young people into adult services, and I think that was the right thing to do. We've got to accept that, actually, just hitting 18 doesn't make everything better; it doesn't change everything and it doesn't turn you into an adult overnight. So, we do need to make sure that we are perhaps more sensitive to the needs of those people who are transitioning. There is, of course, very clear guidance that has been set out with the Together for Children and Young People programme, and people should be following that guidance to make sure that we don't fall into some of the difficulties that I know some people have faced. 

Of course, on top of that, there is the young people's passport and the idea here is that we're empowering the individual to take a bit more ownership of the process, and that, of course, was reviewed in 2019. So, we know there's more work to do here, we know what we need to do, but we know that there are still steps that we need to take and it is of course part of our action plan during these next couple of years.

Minister, I would say this is a key area, not just for the transition process itself, which has often caused difficulties and gaps, but there are several serious mental health conditions that tend to first present in late adolescence and early adulthood, and therefore the management of these conditions, especially when they first appear, is very key to a patient's long-term recovery. I think a lot of attention needs to be given and that we see that period up to 25 being much more like the period just before 18 as well, and this has not always been the case. I know there are well-designed services out there, but we need to see that much more commonly embedded. 

I think that's right, David, and I think there are some organisations that already offer that service, that people can stay in the system until they're 25, and I think what we've got to do is to work towards a system where perhaps that is the offer generally, but that we should give people the choice as to when they want to transition from one to another. That's where I'd like to get to, but I think we have got some work to do in that space. Some health boards are better than others in this space and we just need to put the pressure on those areas that perhaps haven't got as good a system as others.

Thank you very much, Minister.