7. What action is the Welsh Government taking to support children and young people's mental health? OQ56911

We are taking a whole-system approach to improve and support the mental health and well-being of children and young people. This includes actions across health, social care, education and youth work, with a focus on prevention and earlier intervention, whilst also ensuring specialist services are available when needed. 

Thank you, Minister. One of the frustrations many parents have raised with regard to children and young people's mental health is accessing the right service, and that was highlighted in the Children's Commissioner for Wales report, 'No Wrong Door'. And it found that many children, young people and their families looking for support for a number of issues, including mental health, found the system incredibly complex. Some even fell through the gaps altogether, resulting in them not accessing any support at all. As the Children's Commissioner for Wales put it, many were knocking on the wrong door or were waiting for services in the wrong queue. Minister, what is the Welsh Government doing to support the 'no wrong door' approach to services for children and young people in Wales? 

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.