Thank you very much. It's nice to be back and to see everybody.

2. Will the Minister make a statement on budget allocations to the health and social services portfolio in relation to the provision of children's services? OQ56819

Support for the provision of children’s services is a priority in our budget preparations. Most recently, the 2021-22 supplementary budget allocated £98.7 million to the health and social services portfolio to support children.    

Thank you very much, Minister.

I know that the welfare and life chances of our children and young people, especially those in care, is a shared priority for Ministers and me. In the last decade, we have seen an increase in the number of children coming into the care of local authorities, and I know that support workers and others work incredibly hard to give children and young people in care the best start in life. This growth, however, has resulted in significant financial pressures on local authorities, with expenditure on children and families being, on average, the second largest area of spend for councils in Wales. Many local authorities are facing challenges with recruitment and the growing cost of residential care. So, may I ask the Minister, with the expectation that, sadly, more children and families will require support from their local councils in the coming year, what priority will this area of spend have in the forthcoming budget? Diolch yn fawr iawn.

Thank you very much for raising this important issue, and it was an issue that was actually raised with me on my grand summer tour of local authorities and it's certainly something that is of significant concern to some of those authorities. And our programme for government does commit us to ensuring that we fund regional residential services to bring children with complex needs back home from care outside of Wales. I think that will be important both in terms of improving the care available to those children and in terms of the situation for local authorities and their finances.

Spending on children and family services in Wales has increased significantly, by 31.5 per cent from 2015-16 to 2019-20. It's still the case, though, that a large amount of that is spent on children's care home placements. Our focus really has to be on ensuring that children are able to stay with their families, preventing family break-up by funding advocacy services for parents whose children are at risk of coming into care, providing additional specialist support for children with complex needs who might be on the edge of care, and also exploring the radical reform of current services for children who are looked after and care leavers. Those are absolutely critical parts of our programme for government and parts of the discussion I'm having with colleagues as we start to set our budget for the next financial year and the years beyond that. 

The Minister may remember my remarks prior to recess regarding the Summer of Fun programme, where my question was whether or not funding for this programme was sufficient given the high rates of child obesity in Wales. During the summer recess, I was able to visit an organisation that provided activities for the Summer of Fun in South Wales Central, and I was extremely impressed at the range of activities that they offered. Not only did they provide physical activities, but activities that focused on team building, developing confidence and self-reliance as well.

However, it was during my visit that I was made aware of a major issue, which I would ask the Minister to take on board for the future. Ultimately, those activity providers who had applied for funding to provide the Summer of Fun only received notification of the success of their bids four days before they were due to start. This made the process of filling spaces for activities quite chaotic, and gave some families too little time to organise themselves. This resulted in spaces being allocated but children not being able to make the activity. As such, this meant that the course was full even though, ultimately, there were spaces available on the day, which families could have taken advantage of had they known. I therefore ask if the Minister could carefully consider the timing of the funding for 2022, so that activity providers and families can maximise the opportunities available to them. Thank you.

I thank the Member for those points, and I do think that they are well made in terms of the importance of giving local authorities adequate notice of funding that will be available to support various programmes. I share his enthusiasm, though, for what he saw in terms of the activities that took place this year in terms of the Summer of Fun. I think local authorities did a great job, alongside other partners, pulling together some fantastic schemes to ensure that children and young people had an opportunity to enjoy themselves, to meet other people, to get outdoors and do things that they hadn't been able to do for a long time. 

Alongside that, of course, we have our school holiday enrichment programme, which has been tremendously successful, and some local authorities also undertake different schemes that seek to address holiday hunger and support families to undertake activities during parts of the year when the children aren't at school. Obviously, I'll take on board that important comment about the timing of funding and I will be considering how we can support these kinds of projects as we move forward.