6. Debate on the Health, Social Care and Sport report: Inquiry into the impact of the Covid-19 outbreak, and its management, on health and social care in Wales: Report 2 — Impact on mental health and wellbeing

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:24 pm on 3 March 2021.

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Photo of Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan Labour 4:24, 3 March 2021

You've heard that there has been an additional commitment of £42 million. I'm sorry, David, that that wasn't recognised in the financial impact, but it was there, so the money is there and that takes us up to about £783 million that we spend annually now on mental health. That is really important for me. I'm testing out at the moment whether we're spending it in the right places. I'm slightly concerned that we need to look very seriously about whether we're spending that money in the right places. I certainly would want to see a clearer emphasis—in the knowledge that 80 per cent of mental health issues start when people are children and young people, I would like to see a rebalancing of funding going towards that end.

I'll be updating the committee shortly on progress in terms of delivering our response on perinatal mental health and suicide prevention, so I won't go into the detail of that here. But I have recognised the significant work that is going on already across the Welsh Government in terms of our 'Together for Mental Health' programme. One of the things I want to do is to keep an eye on delivery. Dai, you were asking about delivery—you know, what's our timetable. What I've done now is to pull together a ministerial delivery and oversight board for Wales, and we met for the first time last week. That's what I'm trying to do—just get a much better sense of what's going to be done at what point and whether we're on track. Because there's no point in developing a new programme unless we've delivered this programme. So—