8. What assessment has the Welsh Government made of the importance of mental health first aid training in and across all educational settings? OQ56871

There are many interventions available to schools to meet the well-being needs of learners. We encourage schools to draw on those interventions that best meet the needs of their own staff and students. Public Health Wales published an extensive review of mental health first aid programmes in 2016. 

Thank you, First Minister. The importance of mental health, of course, has raised its profile significantly during this pandemic. Due to its importance, I'm thrilled to have recently been made an ambassador for the Where's Your Head At? UK campaign, which has been very successful. This campaign has culminated in a Bill currently going through the UK Parliament to ensure that, within first aid training, mental health first aid training is incorporated, recognising both mental and physical first aid as equally important. I hope that we can emulate this in Wales, First Minister, and, even, better it, by ensuring that mental health first aid training forms an integral part of all first aid training within businesses, but also within our communities. I'm delighted that life-saving first aid will form a part of the new curriculum in schools, but do you agree with me that we should ensure that mental health first aid training forms an integral part of these life-saving skills that are going to go through our educational settings, and also that mental health ambassadors should be in all schools, with comprehensive mental health first aid training? And perhaps it should be incorporated in teacher training itself, so that our children and young people have someone to turn to who can signpost them correctly or even ask those simple, life-saving words, 'Are you okay?'

I thank Laura Anne Jones for that and congratulate her, of course, on her appointment as an ambassador in this very important field. She'll be well aware, I know, of the whole-system approach that we've been developing in schools in Wales, and the contribution that the reformed curriculum will make to safeguarding young people's mental health. I know that my Cabinet colleague Lynne Neagle, who has such a passionate interest in all of this, will welcome the Member's interest in the area and would, I'm quite sure, be very pleased to meet her to talk about some of the issues that have been raised today, and to make sure that we make available to schools and young people the fullest range of resources they can draw on to make sure that health and well-being—physical and emotional well-being—are safeguarded as children, we hope, grow out of the very difficult experiences that they have had to live through over the last 18 months.

I thank the First Minister.