We've also got Trinity Fields special school, of which I'm a governor, but I think we also need another special school in the borough, such is the demand. And I'll be pushing that to the new leadership of Caerphilly County Borough Council. We're also lucky enough to have the Autistic Minds hub, which is a charity organisation, and they allow me to hold surgeries there in Caerphilly town. Once every two months, I hold a surgery there and I meet parents and adults with autism and try to help them through some of these difficult times that you find when you have either a family member, or yourself, diagnosed with autism. 

One thing I wanted to mention was the impact of lockdown. I'm really glad Lynne Neagle is here today. She was Chair of the Children, Young People and Education Committee, of which I was a member, last term, and she'll recall that, during the first lockdown, we were at our wits' end, where the narrow definition of 'vulnerable children' was such that many children with autism and other ALN conditions were finding themselves at home when they should have been in hubs, because children who were being taken to hubs were vulnerable in the sense that they might be harmed at home, not children who were vulnerable with conditions like ASD. Lynne Neagle introduced me to the Together for Children and Young People partnership, and the chair, Carol Shillabeer. And we, as a group of parents from Caerphilly, met with Carol Shillabeer. In the second and third lockdown, those children in Caerphilly went to school and were seen in hubs and onsite. Thank you, Lynne Neagle, for making that happen, and thank you to Carol Shillabeer as well for listening and making sure the Welsh Government made sure that that definition was broader. It was really, really important for people in Caerphilly. And I noticed in our Facebook group, they were saying, 'To my surprise, my son or daughter had a place this time around.' And you can't get closer to democracy and making democracy work for you than that, I don't think. 

But there remain challenges, and ongoing diagnosis and support is one of them. The Royal College of Psychiatrists have been kind enough to supply me with a paper that briefs on some of the things that are needed, and they draw attention to the children's commissioner's 2022 report, 'Making Wales a No Wrong Door Nation—how are we doing?' They highlight a passage from it:

'Waiting times for an assessment for a neurodevelopmental condition (for children with suspected Autism, ADHD and other similar conditions) are extremely long, and in the meantime children and their families can receive very little if any support....When children may have both a neurodevelopmental condition and poor mental health they often receive a very disjointed service, despite this being very common.'

The reason for that is the number of professionals that are involved in the process. I have experienced that, going from the speech and language aspect to the child psychologist aspect, to the teachers, to inclusion in the local authority. There are so many different people involved that it is difficult for a parent to map your way through that process. That is why this idea of 'no wrong door' is a good one. And the variety of manifesting symptoms are always different. For Caitlin, she doesn't have huge meltdowns because of external stimuli; if anything, she's understimulated by her environment. For other children who I see at Sparrows, they are overstimulated, and that's why you might see children wearing ear muffs or earphones, to try to drown out the external noise—although Caitlin has started wearing them, but I think it's more of a fashion statement on her part, because she's seen everybody else doing it. [Laughter.]

There's also, according to the Royal College of Psychiatrists, a shortage of child and adolescent psychiatrists, which is a key problem when it comes to supporting children and adults with autism, because that is a key part of what is needed. I can see Paul Davies in the Chamber, and we had much dialogue when he introduced his autism Bill. We came to the point where we actually disagreed on that. I just took the liberty of digging out the aims of the Bill, and one of them was to introduce a strategy for meeting the needs of children and adults with autistic spectrum disorder conditions. Primarily, it was about ensuring a clear pathway to diagnosis of autism in local areas.