Children and Young People's Mental Health

Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd at 3:05 pm on 29 September 2021.

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Photo of Lynne Neagle Lynne Neagle Labour 3:05, 29 September 2021

Can I thank Joyce Watson for that supplementary? This is absolutely a top priority for me, and we absolutely need to end the situation where children and young people are faced with the wrong door. That's why I'm working closely across Government, especially with the Deputy Minister for Social Services, on the implementation of our new nurturing, empowerment, safe and trusted framework, which is a planning tool to enable regional partnership boards to deliver that early health and enhanced support that we know is the most appropriate for children and young people. I'm meeting with regional partnership boards regularly. I've arranged to go and visit them. I'm also raising it regularly with vice chairs, and everybody is clear that this is a top priority for me, along with joining with our whole-school approach to mental health.

I should also say that I'm really pleased that the health boards are making good progress with the implementation of their single points of contact, which also make a huge difference and ensure that children and young people get more timely access to the support that they need. And in addition to that, we're increasing investment in our tier 0 support to ensure that that non-clinical support is available as well, because following my answer to James Evans earlier, I think it's really important that we don't medicalise children and young people's distress, especially over things like the pandemic, which has been difficult and stressful for all of us. So, we're trying to put all those interventions in place across the whole system, but while ensuring as well that children and young people who do need that more specialist support get it in a timely fashion.