Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Mental Health, Wellbeing and Welsh Language – in the Senedd at 2:41 pm on 24 March 2021.
Diolch yn fawr, Nick. Certainly, that community mental health support is absolutely critical, and I think that it is important that we try and give that support, as far as possible, as close to home as possible, because, generally speaking, mental health support is not something you can just fix once; you have to have an ongoing relationship, you have to keep working on it. That's why actually giving that support in the community is much more valuable, and that's certainly what we're trying to do.
I've met with the vice-chairs now on a couple of occasions since I was appointed to this role, and I've made it absolutely clear to them the direction of travel that I would like to see things going in. One is that we need to really divert more money into tier 0 support—that early, early support—so that we don't see these problems developing and becoming more complex and more difficult for us to treat. So, early help is absolutely critical. The second thing is that we really need to divert more money into supporting children and young people as a proportion of the budget. So, those are the two messages that I've made absolutely clearly to the vice-chairs, as well as, of course, underlining their responsibilities to make sure that all of these services are available through the medium of Welsh.