8. What is the Welsh Government doing to support neonatal parents? OQ57209

I thank Joyce Watson, Llywydd. In the last Senedd term, the Welsh Government invested £110 million in neonatal developments across Wales. That includes specialist perinatal mental health services, which are now available in every health board in Wales, supported by over £3 million in annual mental health improvement funding.

I thank you for that answer, First Minister. Tomorrow marks World Prematurity Day, when we turn our thoughts and our focus to premature birth, which, sadly, sometimes has an overwhelming impact on families. I know that this is something your Government has paid special attention to through the First 1000 Days programme, and with consistent investment in perinatal mental health services, which you've mentioned. The Welsh Government's latest update on this to the Children, Young People and Education Committee set out the good progress that has been made on bereavement support, but is there an update on what is being done to improve psychological support for neonatal parents as well, which the committee had also recommended?

I thank Joyce Watson for that, Llywydd, and for drawing attention to World Prematurity Day tomorrow. One in 10 babies in Wales will need neonatal care, and I think many people would be surprised to learn that in 2020, 2,800 babies in Wales were admitted to neonatal care. I'm very grateful to organisations such as Bliss for the support they offer to families in those circumstances, and I'm hugely grateful to those members of staff, because neonatal services in Wales have been under huge pressure, alongside the rest of the health service, Llywydd, in recent weeks, with absence rates of up to 30 per cent—staff falling ill with coronavirus, affected by it in other ways.

When I was the health Minister, Llywydd, I had the opportunity to visit a number of neonatal units. You barely want to breathe when you're there with babies as tiny as you see being successfully looked after there. Meeting parents, it is a deeply distressing experience for many of them, and psychological support, as Joyce Watson has said, is very important for them too. There are royal college standards in this area, which every health board is working to meet, and where new funding has been made available by the Welsh Government to assist them in doing so. Improved access to psychological therapies remains a priority for service improvement funding in this area, alongside the physical infrastructure, which is very much evident in Joyce Watson's part of Wales. But the therapeutic side is also receiving that investment. 

Thank you, First Minister.