5. What work is being done by the Welsh Government during the pandemic in partnership with local health boards, councils and charities to support those living with substance misuse? OQ56328

During the pandemic, we've worked very closely with area planning boards and other partners. Thanks to the excellent efforts of our substance misuse services on the front line, as well as other services, we have provided additional guidance and support, including new treatment options and funding to meet the complex needs of this group.  

Organisations like Kaleidoscope, working as part of the Gwent drug and alcohol project, are concerned at the difficulties in ensuring good vaccination take-up amongst service users. Their front-line workers have very strong relationships of trust with those service users. They're in regular contact with them and understand the difficulties of chaotic lifestyles. Minister, would you agree that those front-line workers are well placed to actually deliver the vaccinations, given their own training and backgrounds and willingness to undergo any additional training that may be necessary? Allowing them to do that would be one way of ensuring good take-up of vaccine amongst this very vulnerable group. 

Thanks for your support and your interest in this very sensitive area. I was really pleased to meet with the Developing a Caring Wales group, and, of course, Kaleidoscope was there as a part of that representation of people looking after people in these very difficult situations. I heard in that meeting of their offer that they would like to make in terms of offering to vaccinate some of the most fragile people within our communities, with whom, as you say, there is a degree of trust that's been built up. I'm pleased to say that I did pass that information on to our vaccination team. Also, just in terms of the other priority groups, you will see today that we are going to issue new guidance—it has just been published, at 3 o'clock—in terms of people with serious mental health conditions. I think there will be people within the scope of the people who work with Kaleidoscope who maybe will come into that category. We've asked the health boards to make sure that they work with the third sector, with organisations like Kaleidoscope, to make sure that we can reach out to these more vulnerable groups who perhaps are not the kind of people who would go into a normal system.