Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Mental Health, Wellbeing and Welsh Language – in the Senedd at 2:57 pm on 20 January 2021.
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.