3. Will the Minister make a statement on mental health care provision in Carmarthenshire? OQ56145

Thank you, Helen. We expect all health boards to maintain mental health services and to monitor and respond to changing mental health needs. Health boards set out their plans in the quarter 3 and 4 NHS operational framework, submitted in December. They will produce an annual plan for 2021-22, in line with the priorities set out in the NHS annual planning framework for this year. 

I'm grateful to you for your answer, Minister, but just in the last three weeks I've received a number of constituency contacts from people in the east of Carmarthenshire county, in Llanelli and surrounding communities, that I'm really concerned about. One was around the lack of support for survivors of sexual abuse, and very long waits where there is support; a case of a constituent being told to go to A&E when they were having suicidal thoughts and expected to make their own way there; people waiting over a year for counselling through talking therapies, when we know how important that can be; and no support for talking therapies through the medium of Welsh, which can be particularly important here. If somebody has a mental health problem, being able to express themselves around those issues in their language of choice or their first language is so important. 

We would all acknowledge that the Welsh Government has made some big financial investments in mental health, but I would suggest to you that those issues coming out from Llanelli and surrounding communities suggest that we really need to take a long hard look at how those resources are being used. And I have a particular concern about that lack of specialist support for survivors of sexual abuse, and about the lack of access to talking therapies. In the end, Minister, we can end up spending a lot of money in these communities on drug therapies, but those don't solve people's problems; they just help them manage them. So, if I write to you with these cases—and I don't want to mention individuals' names or circumstances here—will you undertake to contact the health board to take a look at what's going on? These may be problems, of course, that are being exacerbated by the COVID situation, but these are people in severe distress and they really should not be being treated in this way.

Thanks, Helen. I think it's really important for us to underline that the health route is not the only route—that, actually, the third sector can do a lot of amazing work in this space. And one of the things that I'm really keen to do is to develop the confidence of GPs, in particular, to feel that they can refer on to other places as well as the medical route. So, I had meetings with the Royal College of General Practitioners last week, just to talk about what more we need to do to increase their confidence that, if they refer to a third sector organisation, they will know that there will be quality associated with that and a consistency in terms of where that can be delivered. So, I think those are conversations that need to continue.

That specialist support, you see, is not necessarily something that the health board is best placed to do. There are third sector organisations who can do this probably better than the health board, because of the sensitivities surrounding them, because of lived experience, or whatever. So, for me, that additional support for tier 0, for that third sector, is absolutely where it's at, but now we've got to build that confidence between the medical, the primary care settings and the third sector. It works brilliantly in some areas, but it's not a consistent picture across the whole of Wales.