3. How is the Welsh Government working cross-sector to provide mental health support for children and young people? OQ57035

I thank the Member for that question, Llywydd. A multi-agency national partnership board, regional partnership boards and local partnership arrangements in each health board all help ensure a collaborative and cross-sector approach to delivering mental health services for children and young people.

A Flintshire-based charity providing professional high-quality mental health support and recovery in the community, including a project that empowers young people to build resilience, boost confidence and manage difficult emotions, has told me that school leaders they’ve spoken to in Flintshire are facing a significant increase in the numbers of young people in their care presenting with mental health issues and concerns. They say many children and young people have been affected, even traumatised, by their own unique experiences of the pandemic. Issues including bereavement, isolation, fear of illness, of death, family breakdown, poverty, unemployment, substance misuse and domestic violence were all hothoused due to the unavoidable nature of successive lockdowns and the vastly reduced access to usual support networks, both formal and informal. They add that children and young people who feel emotionally unsafe or in pain do not learn well. How do you, therefore, respond to the charity’s call for the Welsh Government to ensure that Estyn and other regulatory bodies are fit for post-pandemic purposes, with an emphasis on the well-being and welfare of pandemic-affected pupils and indeed staff also?

I thank the Member for those further points. The experiences that he recounted, I think, are very familiar to anybody who has had conversations with young people about their experience during the pandemic, and the anxieties that it has caused them to experience for their future. Llywydd, you were kind enough to arrange a number of opportunities for me and other Ministers to meet with representatives from the Youth Parliament in recent times, and the mental health and well-being of young people was always one of the foremost issues that they wanted to discuss in those forums. I think that Estyn has adapted its way of working very much to take into account both the practical impact that the pandemic has had on the way that teachers have to go about their work, but also to take into account the impact that these experiences have had upon young people, their ability to learn and the way in which they bring those other aspects of their lives with them into the school and into the classroom. And, in the information that I have had about the changes that Estyn has made to its own ways of working, and the focus of the inspections and other work they do in school, I think, can give us some confidence that the very proper points that the organisation in Flintshire has raised are being taken into account seriously in the work that they do.

Brif Weinidog, a young man with complex mental health issues contacted me recently and praised the work of the Ty Canna day centre within your Cardiff West constituency. For those in the Siambr who don't know, Ty Canna provides transitional services for people transitioning from children's services to adult services. And this work is crucial; as we know, far too many people fall between the cracks at this point. The concern that this young man has is that the good work happening in Ty Canna day services will be lost if the services are moved from there. It's now in a very convenient central location, and there are great resources there. It provides privacy for those who need it. Can you please guarantee that Welsh Government will be discussing with key partners to address these concerns and to make sure that no further young people are lost from the system? Diolch yn fawr, Brif Weinidog.

Thank you very much for that question. I'm familiar with Ty Canna, of course. 

In my recollection, it is a service that is wholly funded by Cardiff Council on the one hand and the local health board on the other. I don't recollect any direct investment from the Welsh Government in the service, but it does do what the Member has said: it helps with that most difficult part in our public services when responsibility for a young person is transferred to people who run adult services, and we've all, no doubt, had frustrations at different times about the way in which services appear to be taken by surprise by the fact that a young person has turned 18. And Ty Canna has a very good reputation in that way. I'm not familiar with the point that has been raised with the Member about the location of the service. Of course I'll make sure that Welsh Government officials are engaged in any conversation generally.

I think, Llywydd, what I would say is that it's the quality of the service rather than the location from which it is delivered that in the end is the most important thing, and we'd need to see what proposals, if any, there are to strengthen the service further.

I want to thank our First Minister for his continued work around young people and mental health, and in particular his commitment to early prevention and access to services. And, in the last year, Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board, which covers Bridgend and Porthcawl, has had a total number of 1,359 admissions to mental health services. Please would the First Minister provide an update on the child and adolescent mental health services in-reach manifesto commitments as part of our Welsh Government early intervention approach?

Well, I thank Sarah Murphy for that, Llywydd. It gives me a chance just to reaffirm again the principle of de-escalation as one of the fundamental drivers of the way we provide services for young people. We should be aiming to intervene at the lowest possible point in order to address their needs rather than allowing those needs to escalate to a point where only an admission to a mental health facility is sufficient to respond to them.

The pilot of the CAMHS in-reach service was very positive; I know that it was positively regarded by the committee in the last Senedd that looked at the evaluation. And it's on the basis of it that the Welsh Government has agreed £5 million of funding to allow local health boards to roll out the pilots from those local authorities where it had been first deployed, so that it is available everywhere; £4 million of that £5 million has now been agreed with LHBs over the summer, and they are now in the business of recruiting people to do so. The CAMHS in-reach project will succeed if it does what Sarah Murphy said: if it allows more young people to receive the help they need earlier in those needs, to reduce the number of people who end up, as she pointed out, needing admission to a mental health facility in the local health board area that she represents.