And for that I'm extremely grateful, Presiding Officer—Chair, sorry. Yesterday, my colleague Mark Isherwood highlighted once again the vulnerability of looked-after children. He said that, although looked-after children are taken into local authority care to improve their welfare, they are over represented in child criminal county lines exploitation and are therefore far from being effectively safeguarded. It's disappointing, then, that looked-after children merit just one mention in Welsh Government's mental health delivery plan 2019-2022, which is

'to ensure specialist mental health services...are equally accessible for...children and young people' in

'or on the edge of care.'

I don't think that is the greatest ambition that should be reflected in that report. 

And still, this year, Welsh Government was still expecting to be at the stage of developing proposals for better integration between health and social services and agreeing the scope of work streams. What happened to the prompts in 'Listen. Act. Thrive.', the report that was presented to David Melding's advisory group? And where is the particular attention for looked-after children in the £15 million that has gone to the regional partnership boards? Have they even caught up with children's mental health needs yet?

These young people, even if they remain looked after for longer, thanks to the When I am Ready policy, and even if they've been with the most nurturing and restorative foster families, will inevitably find any transition to adult mental health services very challenging. Not all looked-after children will need formal mental health care when they are younger, but you can see why the challenge of moving into independent adult life could trigger or exacerbate poor mental health. 

It's not only looked-after children who face that challenge. I spoke to a constituent today who feared that their teenage autistic child—very loved and very supported, doing very well at a specialist school—would really struggle once they had to move to the oversight of adult social services. And while that's not mental health services, they were worried that the collapse of the child's familiar support system and the loss of parental responsibility would result in that young person needing mental health support too. 

Just as When I am Ready recognised the arbitrariness of a birthday as the signal to switch services, so did the Together for Children and Young People programme. We heard in evidence for the original 'Mind over matter' report that young people felt that they were expected to become adults overnight, that it was scary, that it was like jumping off a cliff edge to move from CAMHS to adult services. The Royal College of GPs said that young people disappear into a black hole. Youth workers told us that some young people find even basic things impossible. 

And, yes, guidance on how to transition well existed then and subsequently, but the essential failure remains, and that is delivery. And it matters acutely, because it's amongst those 18 to 19-year-olds that we see suicide rates rise. The impact of the guidance, which Together for Children and Young People prepared then, was due to be reviewed by this month. So, did you discover, Minister, any delivery on our recommendations? 

What we heard two years later—well, the attempt to move away from the arbitrary transition date of a person's eighteenth birthday isn't consistently successful. Many young people are still being automatically transferred to adult services on that birthday, and that inconsistency and lack of continuity is setting young people back. While we understand that extending CAMHS to the age of 25 would incur cost, what does it cost us and that young person if they have no real chance to wean themselves away from previous support?

We also heard from Welsh Government in February this year, and remember, please, that 'Mind over matter' was published in April 2018, that a draft consultation on draft transition guidance was beginning. Beginning—almost two years later. The recent expectation on health boards to monitor and evaluate implementation of the guidance, Welsh Government's commitment to a review of those approaches, Professor John's very welcome review of suicide and self-harm incidences in the last five years—I just really don't feel that Welsh Government's response to our recommendations on this issue of transition has been urgent, and it needed to be urgent. 

In the mental health delivery plan, there is no mention in the 'progress to date' section of transition, and that's not surprising, because there are no proposals to even develop the arrangements to monitor the use of the guidance until next year or the year after. Why on earth is this taking so long? There was already good guidance in 2018, enhanced by the subsequent work of Together for Children and Young People, and yet you still wanted to review it.

In short, Minister, I'm afraid that our fears have been realised. By absorbing responsibility for the mental health of children and young people into an all-age plan, it has lost its priority. For all the hard work that has been done—and we acknowledge that, and the millions poured into this—we are, to all intents and purposes, no further on in helping young people transfer seamlessly, with support, into adult services.