And the short debate is to be moved by Caroline Jones.

Diolch, Llywydd. The coronavirus pandemic may have begun as a physical health emergency, but it has become a mental health crisis. The fallout from dealing with the SARS-CoV-2 virus has had a profound impact on the mental health of people of all ages and from all walks of life in every corner of Wales. And we are not unique: studies have shown the impact the pandemic has had on mental health across many nations. However, we have been one of the worst affected nations. Earlier this week, the Mental Health Million Project launched their report into the impact the pandemic is having on mental health and well-being around the globe. Their report is based on studies of people from eight English-speaking countries: the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and the substantial English-speaking populations of South Africa, India and Singapore. And they found that mental well-being fell dramatically during the past 12 months, and that the UK saw the most dramatic decline.

The Deputy Presiding Officer took the Chair.

Here in Wales, we have had some of the longest periods of restrictions on our social activity in the world, so it is little wonder that we have experienced some of the greatest impacts. We are, for the most part, social animals, and spending time with friends and family is a vital part of our emotional and mental well-being. Having to cut all face-to-face contact for a staggering 212 days has seen far greater numbers of people suffering from loneliness and isolation, and those suffering from loneliness have been further isolated.

The halt to care home visits has left many people struggling, and this has been particularly hard for dementia patients. They don't always understand the reason behind the restrictions and feel they've been abandoned by their loved ones. This is also traumatic for the families of those in care. It must be heartbreaking to be unable to visit their loved ones, especially for those on palliative care.

Loneliness and isolation haven't just hit the elderly hard, they've impacted on people across the age spectrum, people from all walks of life, and with many people working from home or furloughed, often the only time they see another human being is over a video link. But a Zoom meeting cannot replicate in-person interactions. This is particularly true for young people—young people who have had not just their ability to go outside and play with their friends curtailed, but their education and development stunted.

What has been more damaging, however, has been the on-again, off-again in-person learning, as well as the inconsistent approach across the age ranges. People do not understand why their siblings can go to school, but they have to stay home. Some school pupils returned to the classroom a few weeks ago and more cohorts returned this week, but others will not return for another month. Children have experienced anxiety about returning, and parents are reporting that their child has developed behavioural issues. And it's a terrible burden for young people to bear. Young people are concerned about their education, their future, and many parents have reported finding their child in tears because they're worried about passing the virus on to their parents or grandparents. I find it heartbreaking that children must deal with such issues and that they must be concerned about their future, rather than being able to enjoy the present.

Yet, they're not alone in being anxious about the future. So, to combat the disease, we shut down large parts of the economy, closed entire sectors, resulting in many people becoming out of work, and, thankfully, we had the job retention scheme that saw millions of people furloughed, rather than laid off. But those people are worried about whether the business they work for will survive post pandemic. Anxiety about future economic stability has pushed many people into mental ill health. Far too many sleepless nights have resulted over people's concerns about providing food and shelter for themselves and their family.

However, mental trauma hasn't been confined just to those out of work. Working during the pandemic has been stressful for many, especially those who could not maintain social distancing. Police officers, prison guards, firefighters and all those on the front line in health and social care have put themselves at risk of contracting a deadly disease in order to keep us all safe. And those working in the NHS and care homes have also had to deal with seeing their patients and sometimes colleagues lose their lives to COVID-19. So, we have seen harrowing tales of doctors and nurses likening work during the pandemic to being in a war zone, so great was the death toll. Nurses had to work for hours in painful PPE, doing physically demanding tasks, such as turning COVID patients so they didn't drown from fluid on their lungs. They then had to sit with patients as they died, so that they wouldn't face their end alone. Witnessing such dreadful things has taken its toll, with staff unable to take time off to recuperate because there's no-one to take their place.

Thankfully, most people do not have to experience that level of mental trauma, but very few have come through the past 12 months unscathed. COVID-19 may have started as the biggest public health challenge in more than a century, but it is now becoming the biggest mental health challenge we have ever faced, also. So, what can we do about it? I welcome the investment by the Welsh Government to offer online cognitive behavioural therapy to everyone in Wales over the age of 16, but we must do so much more. We need to employ an army of therapists and counsellors. We have to put counsellors in every school, encourage every employer to offer emotional and mental health support to their staff. We have to ensure everyone in Wales gets whatever support they need.

We need to encourage landlords to allow tenants to keep their pets. This might seem like a strange request, but it's no coincidence that pet ownership skyrocketed during lockdown. Pets can help us deal with loneliness and isolation, and having a dog can spur people to leave the sofa and go out for a walk, helping to boost our mental health resilience. Unfortunately, a lot of landlords, and particularly social landlords, prevent pet ownership. I've been dealing with Tai Tarian, who refused to allow one of my constituents to get a dog. Thankfully, I learned last night that she has been granted an emotional support dog, following pressure from her GP. But people should not have to fight for emotional support. We must be flexible and provide whatever support is needed. Tai Tarian is no exception, but pleasingly not all social landlords are negative towards pet ownership, as in the case of Hafod Housing, who look at the size of your accommodation and that determines the size of the dog that you can have.

Yesterday, the Royal College of Physicians called upon the Welsh Government to deliver on their commitment to make staff health and well-being a national priority, and I agree with this. Health and care staff looked after us, so we must look after their mental well-being. Unless we tackle the emotional and mental fall-out of the coronavirus pandemic head on and now, we will see a lot more than one in four of us suffering from mental ill health. Diolch yn fawr. Thank you very much. 

I now call the Minister for Mental Health, Wellbeing and Welsh Language to reply to the debate. Eluned Morgan. 

Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. I'd like to thank Caroline Jones for bringing this short debate forward on such an important issue.  

Thank you very much, Caroline Jones, for introducing this debate in such a compassionate way; you have been full of humanity in the way that you've presented that. So, thank you very much, because it is an issue that is touching so many lives at the moment. 

We often talk about the need to ensure that people have access to mental health services and that support continues to be available, particularly during such a challenging time. But our focus today is on supporting people who are suffering anxiety and how we can move on from the pandemic and how we move to the future. And although levels of anxiety have remained higher than they were prior to the pandemic, we have seen them rise and fall, too. As the restrictions are relaxed, levels of anxiety have reduced and, of course, that is totally understandable. I hope that we will see levels of anxiety falling further if things continue to improve and those restrictions are relaxed. 

By seeing friends and family, and participating in activities that we enjoy, we can all look after our own mental health and, for many people, mental health and well-being will improve as we return to normality. But, for others, the impact of the pandemic will be felt more deeply, and this could be because of the trauma that the individual has experienced, through illness or if that individual may have lost a family member or a friend to COVID. Caroline mentioned those people who were working on the front-line in our health service; of course, they've suffered trauma during this period too. We also know that the pandemic has had, and will have, an impact on our economy and our society, not just in the short term, but it's likely to continue to the medium term too. So, it is important that we understand the impact of employment, income and housing on people's mental health, and that we understand the circumstances that have changed during this period.

In order to restore our mental health post pandemic, it's crucial that we don't look at this as a matter to be treated by medical means only. Of course, we are committed to maintaining specialist services to help with mental health needs throughout the pandemic that require the help of our national health service, but I also think that we will need access to a variety of non-clinical support for many people. I'm pleased today that I had a first meeting with the task and finish group on social prescribing, and I do hope that this will be something that we can look into for the future. I've also presented a paper to Cabinet recently outlining these issues, and I have been entirely clear that we need more cross-governmental multi-agency work if we are to prevent this spike that we're anticipating in terms of mental health needs—needs that are based on social issues and issues of well-being that go far more broadly.

In terms of understanding the impacts of COVID-19 on mental health, we're continuing to strengthen the arrangements that we put in place at the start of the pandemic. These include analytical support to draw out the latest evidence of outcomes from population surveys, both in Wales and in the wider UK. Caroline was absolutely right to draw attention to the fact that people in Britain seem to have coped with this not as well as in some other countries. I've also recently convened a ministerial oversight and delivery board group, which is providing me with a greater assurance of the progress that's being made in delivering our mental health programme of work, including our continued response to COVID-19.

Public Health Wales are represented on the board and will help to strengthen that analytical support. They're taking forward important work to examine the existing and ongoing impact of COVID-19, in particular on children and young people. Caroline was absolutely right to draw attention to this, because we know that the children's commissioner in her survey 'Coronavirus and Me' found that 67 per cent of children between the age of 12 and 18 said that they were sad some or most of the time. Just think about that figure; it's a huge figure, and we really have got to put measures in place. I'm really pleased that the education Minister has being doing that with her whole-school approach; we've now expanded that to the whole-system approach, and all of that was partly a result of responding to the really terrific report written by the children's committee, 'Mind over matter'. We're currently working on a framework for the renewal of mental health services with the NHS, which will sit within the context of the NHS-wide recovery strategy, which will be published very shortly.

We're continuing to support the Talking is a Lifeline campaign to encourage men to talk about mental health. Some of you may have seen that programme last night; very traumatic watching how men have such difficulty talking about mental health issues. And we are also supporting groups that have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic, including black, Asian and minority ethnic groups, and people who are on low income, as we look to extend that support. Caroline, you mentioned the responsibility of employers, and of course, they will play a key role in supporting economic recovery and improving the health of the working-age population. Our Healthy Working Wales programme will focus on mental health and well-being, and we will work with employers to understand the current needs, including potential shifts in working patterns, which will inform the future of work. I know that Public Health Wales are currently undertaking a range of interviews with private and public sector employees to just inform our approach on this. 

We continue to recognise the potential impact of the pandemic on future employment and health. The chief medical officer chairs a group to consider these issues, and we know that there is a significant impact upon mental health and well-being, particularly due to reduced employment opportunities, and a need to support action across a range of partners and stakeholders. I've spoken previously about the work we've done to strengthen our universal offer for low-level mental health issues, and you referred to that SilverCloud offering, that cognitive behavioural therapy support, which has been used now by about 6,000 in six months. I've committed a further £4 million next year to expand this type of support, and other support—it's not just online, of course. This is part of additional funding of £42 million next year to support mental health services. We know this will strengthen service improvements within health boards, and in particular the out-of-hours response, which is really important when it comes to mental health support. 

We've got to remember that this additional funding is against the backdrop of a much larger pot of money that we allocate to local health boards each year. I've been clear that, whilst I understand the need to protect specialist support, I'd really like to see a shift in resources towards prevention and earlier mental health support, and in particular towards the needs of children and young people, because we know 80 per cent of problems relating to mental health generally start when people are children and young people.

In conclusion, I'm clear that, whilst mental health support has been available throughout the pandemic, as we emerge, we need to renew and rebuild that provision in a way that's far more preventative in nature, and which reflects the needs in our population. By working closely with the NHS and other partners, I think that the significant additional funding we've secured will help to do this in a way that will make it sustainable for the future. So, thank you, Caroline, again, for bringing this really important issue to the attention of the Chamber, and certainly I hope that people will try and reach out for the support that is there for them. Diolch yn fawr. 

Thank you very much, Minister. That brings today's proceedings to a close. Thank you.

The meeting ended at 17:27.