Adverse Childhood Experiences

Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Finance and Local Government – in the Senedd at 1:33 pm on 23 June 2021.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Rebecca Evans Rebecca Evans Labour 1:33, 23 June 2021

Well, in our Welsh Government budget, we set out a wide range of activities that we'll be undertaking in order to tackle and prevent child poverty. You'll have seen our additional funding for free school meals, for example, and Wales was, of course, the first country in the UK to announce that free school meals would be extended right the way through the school holidays, until Easter 2022. And we're currently undertaking a piece of work to look further at free school meals and our policy there, to ensure that we are encapsulating those children who need it most.

You'll understand as well that we've been looking at what more we can do in terms of our pupil development grant access scheme, to widen that out to a wider number of children and families here in Wales. So, we're looking at the schemes that we currently have and what else we can be doing in this particular important area. And, as you say, poverty in and of itself is not one of the adverse childhood experiences that we think of when we talk about ACEs, but it certainly is an absolutely key issue that we have to tackle alongside ACEs.