Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:21 pm on 7 December 2021.
I thank the Member for another very important question this afternoon. Those were disturbing figures that were published and, as ever, it is very difficult to distinguish between the success that organisations on the ground have had in persuading more people to come forward and to report crimes of domestic abuse from the actual increase that we know has been there as a result of the pandemic, but because we have never succeeded in eradicating domestic abuse here in Wales. There are a series of ways in which the Welsh Government works with others to try to respond to the most contemporary patterns: £4 million in additional investment during the pandemic period, the work of the taskforce that we have brought together in Wales on domestic violence, led by a police and crime commissioner. It meets every week, it's meeting again on Thursday of this week. It is developing the blueprint approach here in Wales that's been very successful in relation to youth offending and female offending, and that blueprint approach is reflected in the strategy that we are launching for consultation today, a strategy that focuses on co-ordination, on making sure there are specialist services available when necessary, and where there's a national framework of standards to make sure that the services that are available in one part of Wales reflect the nature and quality of services that will be available elsewhere.