6. How is the Welsh Government working to provide high-quality care for children and young people in specialist residential homes? OQ57940

Llywydd, such care is best provided as a public service and as close to home as possible. To that end, we have provided £3.5 million in revenue funding to regional partnership boards to develop specialist residential services for children with complex needs, and we've complemented that revenue funding by over £14 million in capital funding as well.

Diolch, Prif Weinidog. Children and young people who are in residential care need as much love, compassion and support as possible, and I'm proud that the Welsh Government is committed to that. In Newport, we're starting to see the benefits of the Perthyn project, an ambitious long-term programme that intends to bring children back to the city, where they're from, so that they can receive better standards of care closer to familiar surroundings. Within the city, three purpose-built homes have been set up by Newport City Council. In these homes, there are no offices or locked doors, and the ultimate aim is to create a friendly, home-like, comfortable atmosphere for the children. Some of the young people who have returned to Newport have been able to move back to live with their families after getting the right transitional support in the homes. Prif Weinidog, can you join me in congratulating Newport City Council, under the leadership of Jane Mudd, on this, and in particular Paul Cockeram, who was the cabinet member responsible and whose personal mission and determination to drive down the numbers of out-of-county placements by bringing these young people back to good-quality, compassionate homes has been exceptional?

Well, I very much thank Jayne Bryant for that question, and I strongly welcome the Project Perthyn initiative taking place in Newport. It is an absolute public policy priority for this Government to see more children looked after closer to their homes and the communities where they grew up. Too many children in Wales are looked after outside Wales; too many children in Wales are looked after outside the county that has parental responsibility for them. And Newport council, working with other local authorities in Gwent, has I think been a leading example of the way in which, provided we invest in the right sort of facilities, with properly trained staff, it is absolutely possible for those children to be looked after successfully closer to their families and closer to their homes, with better long-term prospects for those children themselves and a better return on the investment that the taxpayer makes in looking after them.

I absolutely pay tribute to Councillor Paul Cockeram, Llywydd. He's somebody who I have known for over a decade and whose work not simply in the field of children's services, but using some of the same ideas in adult services, means that, in Newport, I know the local authority has been able to bring some former privately run residential homes back into the direct service of the local authority, which is financially a more effective way of using the local authority's resources and making sure that the care provided is provided as a public service.