Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:37 pm on 10 May 2022.
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.