Thank you, Presiding Officer, for this opportunity.

1. Will the Minister make a statement on allegations by whistleblowers that children with autism have been subject to abuse at the Tŷ Coryton home in Cardiff? TQ553

Care Inspectorate Wales was made aware of concerns relating to the service and undertook an inspection as a result. Areas for improvement have been brought to the providers' attention, but not in relation to restrictive practices. Investigations by Cardiff social services on safeguarding concerns are ongoing.

Thank you, Minister, for that statement. Some of our most vulnerable people in our society, children with autism, should be protected and cared for, not made to suffer in such vile circumstances as alleged in this case. There are some serious questions, and this must be now fully investigated by relevant authorities. There are a litany of shocking and troubling allegations against the staff at Tŷ Coryton, some of which I can't repeat, but on one occasion and most seriously, the restraint of a child was so badly managed that it provoked very serious concerns that that child might die. Whistleblowers report that all of these allegations were directly a result of staff interventions and point to a culture of mismanagement provoking challenging behaviour that falls way short of the high standards we expect for staff charged with such an important job. Are these allegations reflective of a systematic problem in Wales? Could other young children be suffering in similar ways? Action needs to be taken now, Minister, to resolve this.

I'm pleased to hear that the Minister will be publishing the long-awaited reducing restrictive practice framework, but this is far too late for these children's and, I fear, others. Can I impress upon her that that needs to be published now to prevent more young children suffering in this way? And can she also tell us what steps she's taking to provide advice and guidance for centres such as Tŷ Coryton, to ensure that they are providing a therapeutic environment as recommended by the British Institute of Learning Disabilities? Will the Minister also make sure that centres like this have the necessary resources that they need to ensure basic human decency and human rights can be maintained, such as providing sanitary items, a claim that was alleged that I found particularly disturbing?

I understand that the care inspectorate are about to publish a review into practices at Tŷ Coryton, but these alleged allegations certainly now call the veracity of that report into question. Is the Minister confident that these reports are conducted with sufficient rigour to highlight issues such as these, to ensure that they are addressed promptly? Will the centre and others owned by Orbis now be re-inspected to ensure that children in their care are properly protected?

Lastly, if there is a systematic issue here, what steps is the Minister taking to ensure that the culture of reporting exists in the care sector in Wales and to ensure that staff have the support network in place and are comfortable enough with that to raise concerns and these reports are taken seriously and acted on, rather than them having to resort to the media, as in this case? Thank you.

Thank you, Laura Anne Jones, for those comments, and I absolutely agree that the children we're talking about are some of the most vulnerable children who need care and support, and should not suffer. The Welsh Government is committed to those vulnerable children having the best standards of care possible.

As I said in my statement, these allegations are being investigated, so we're not in a position to make any comment yet, because an investigation is ongoing at the moment. But I can reiterate that the Welsh Government will be publishing the reducing restrictive practices framework, and that'll be in July—next month—2021. So, that's coming very soon, and that will promote measures to appropriately reduce restrictive practices in childcare, education, health and social care settings. And we will support work to promote implementation across all those sectors. And the guidance is intended to ensure that those who work with children and adults across services share a common framework of principles and expectations, informed by an approach that actively promotes human rights and person-centred support. There has been a consultation about the restrictive practices, and I'm looking forward to that being published in July 2021. 

So, obviously, CIW does report regularly on these settings, including Tŷ Coryton. We do have a culture of encouraging whistleblowers, and I think it's very important that that is reiterated and that allegations that are made are taken very seriously. I can absolutely assure her that these allegations are being looked into very seriously. They're being looked into by Cardiff safeguarding scheme, and CIW is working very closely with the local authority, with the commissioning and safeguarding teams, and the service is now in Children's Commissioning Consortium Cymru's—known as '4Cs'—escalating concerns process. So that is the position at the moment, and Orbis is not admitting any further children to the service at the moment. But I don't think I can really go much further as this is all being investigated at the moment. 

According to the reports, whistleblowers state that children were punished for engaging in autistic behaviour and the health and safety of staff and children were absolutely shocking, and young people were mismanaged, so behaved in challenging ways, which led to them being locked away. But this is symptomatic of so much of the casework that I have on behalf of autistic constituents and/or their families, where highly paid people in power, so-called experts, fail to understand their autism, fail to identify their communication, sensory and processing needs in order to communicate with them in an effective, respectful way and pushes them into crisis and then punishes them for not responding in a neurotypical or predominantly neurotypical way, affecting their care, their social care, their health services, access to housing, and many other things. How on earth are we finally going to tackle this endemic and deep-rooted problem raised so often through the cross-party autism group in previous Senedd terms without putting in place statutory duties for local authorities and health boards and giving autism and neurodevelopmental conditions in Wales a statutory identity at last? 

Thank you, Mark, for those comments, and certainly the behaviour that he described at the beginning of his contribution, about children being punished for engaging in behaviour that is due to their autism, is certainly not acceptable. And I think that we have all, as constituency MSs, experienced the difficulties that families have in trying to get the best services for their children who are on the autistic spectrum. So, I think we all understand those difficulties. But, as I said in response to Laura, investigations are going on at the moment into this particular situation, and we will be able to see what happens as a result of those investigations.  

Thank you, Deputy Minister.