2. What is the Welsh Government doing to ensure the voices of looked-after children and care leavers are heard, to enable them to inform policy decisions, such as radical reform of current services? OQ58012

Llywydd, I thank Jack Sargeant for that. Listening to the voice of children is integral to our work and, indeed, is enshrined in legislation passed by this Senedd. This summer, we will bring care-experienced young people together to discuss our radical agenda of reducing care numbers, eliminating profit making in the care system, and delivering our groundbreaking basic income scheme.

I'm grateful to the First Minister for that. And the First Minister will be aware that I'm currently chairing the Petitions Committee evidence sessions on the routine collection and publication of data of how many babies and children return to their care-experienced parents at the end of a parent and child placement. Now, as part of my commitment to engage the committee with the Welsh public, I and my colleague Buffy Williams visited Voices From Care Cymru and met care-experienced parents to hear directly from them. One individual told us about the interaction they had with their social worker, and I quote:

'I had some wine in the kitchen since Christmas. The social worker came in, found it, and poured it down the sink. And they said, "If you carry on like this, you will end up like your mum." I hadn't even opened it yet, they assumed I was a drinker, and I wasn't.'

Llywydd, there are countless examples of how people who have experienced trauma in their lives are being treated differently to how either I or you or the rest of the Members in this Senedd would be spoken to. First Minister, in the programme for government, you are committed to exploring radical reform of current services for care leavers. It is clear from the conversations that I've had that they want to engage in this process. Will you commit to ensuring that young people in care, and care leavers, are fully engaged?

Llywydd, I thank Jack Sargeant for that additional question. And I think it illustrates the importance of the committee that he chairs and the way in which the Petitions Committee is able to bring the direct testimony of people in Wales to bear on the discussions that we have as a Government and in this Chamber. We are already committed to making sure that the voice of young people is heard in the programmes that we are taking forward. We launched our children and young people's plan on 1 March. It was a great pleasure, together with the Minister Julie Morgan to meet with young people whose voices were reflected in that plan. And the oversight board, which is charged with making sure that that plan is put into practice, has two care-experienced young people on that board—one representing young people from north Wales and the other young people here in the south. Our corporate parenting group, which, again, oversees the work that our local authority colleagues are doing, has five young people in a panel, helping to make sure that that work is properly discharged. All of that is testimony to our ongoing determination to make sure that the voice of young people, and particularly care-experienced young people, is heard directly in the development of the services on which they either currently or have in the past relied.

In relation to the specific point that Jack Sargeant raised, Llywydd, we are committed as a Government to making sure that there are parental advocacy services for families who find themselves at risk of being drawn into the care system, so that those sorts of remarks are not made to people who are vulnerable in that way, in a way that they would not be made of other parents. And that parental advocacy service has now been funded, as a result of the budget passed in this Senedd, and will be rolled out over the 12 months that lie ahead, and will be a further example of the way in which we can make sure that the voice of young people, and the voice of those caught up in public systems, is heard and heard powerfully.

Gareth Davies.

I didn't realise I was down for a supplementary. But on your point on the abolition of the profit-making children's services in Wales, it actually makes up 80 per cent of the sector, First Minister. So, with that in mind, are you able to change that policy to make it more reflective of the private sector, which makes up such a fair chunk of the sector in Wales? Thank you. 

No, Llywydd, I don't intend to change that policy. It is a policy directly influenced by the voices of young people themselves. I commend to the Member the annual report of the children's commissioner, in which young people in the care system described what it is like to be put up for auction on a website so that their care can be provided by the cheapest bid. That is simply not acceptable here in Wales. The services that are provided to our young people need to be provided on the basis of their need, rather than the private profit taking of private companies. I wonder whether the Member has read the Competition and Markets Authority report—two reports—last year, commissioned by his Government in Westminster, both of which report on the excessive profit taking of companies in this field, a fact that was recognised by UK Ministers. We will work over the course of this term to make sure that companies that operate in Wales do so in a way that guarantees any profits they make are reinvested in the service that they provide, rather than being taken out of Wales into the hands of private shareholders.