Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:54 pm on 15 December 2020.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:54, 15 December 2020

Well, I thank the Member. It's an absolutely important area, of course. It comes up in all the conversations that I have when I'm talking to people beyond the Senedd. It comes up in conversations with our health workers, who've gone through a year not simply torrid in terms of the physical strain of the job that they do, but the emotional wear and tear that it has of seeing people who would otherwise be fit and well suffering from this awful disease. It comes up very regularly in the discussions that I have with young people, who are very alert to the impact that this year will have had on their sense of resilience and looking to the future.

I think what we have learnt through the many different impact assessments that we have done is that mental health services have to be provided in a range of different ways, because the sort of help that any one person might wish will vary from the way that other people will wish to access it. It's why we have the range of services that we do: a 24-hour, seven days a week telephone helpline for people who want to talk to somebody who they don't need to meet again, and for some people that is the best way of dealing with it. They don't want to have a conversation continuously; they want to be able to speak to somebody knowing that that person is skilled and able to help them, and knowing that, when they put the phone down, that's the end of the conversation. Our young people are often inclined to prefer online types of help with mental health and well-being issues. They like to use the exercises and help that is available in that way, and other people would prefer to sit down face-to-face with somebody and know that, if they need to speak to that person again next week, that person will be available to them. We have strengthened all of those strands in the response that we have made over the past months, to try to respond to the impact on people's sense of well-being.

The signposting to those services relies not simply on what the Welsh Government does, but on our partners in the third sector, such as Mind Cymru, and in our public services as well. As we go into next year, where we hope very much that there will be some more reasons for being optimistic that this experience will come to an end, we will still need to attend not just to the immediate impacts of the virus, but the long impact that coronavirus can have on people's physical, but also their mental well-being.