Part of Questions to the Deputy Minister and Chief Whip – in the Senedd at 2:35 pm on 2 February 2021.
Thank you, Jayne Bryant, for bringing attention to this important charity in your constituency. In fact, inspirational work, as you've described, is done by charities like Sparkle. And, of course, all their volunteers in the Gwent area are particularly helping to support disabled children and young people and their families. So, as you say, Sparkle did benefit from the £90,000 grant from what was our voluntary services emergency fund, during the pandemic, and we'll be ensuring that these sources of support for third sector organisations continue during the pandemic. But it has been a great challenge for communities and groups of this kind, because of the coronavirus outbreak. Because so many of them, of course, have lost income, as well as having additional demands and expectations, and so many volunteers have engaged. But I am very pleased that, as I said in answer to your first question, we're making a further £5.7 million available to continue with this work through the pandemic, and I hope this will be able to support organisations such as yours.