Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd at 1:46 pm on 11 May 2022.
Definitely, and thank you for your answer, Deputy Minister. It's very important that you work very closely with the Minister for education around that to make sure that our young people are educated in schools around that. And you talked about accessing support, and many of those young people who are struggling need the appropriate support through their troubles, but a lot of that, Minister, is lacking across Wales. Many young people cannot access initial child and adolescent mental health services assessments: 60 per cent of children wanting specialist CAMHS pathways are waiting over four weeks for an initial assessment; it's nearly doubled since March 2020. And I know you and I both agree that that's just not good enough. As someone recently told me, Deputy Minister, 'You need to be on the verge of doing something extremely silly to get the support you need.' I know that's something you don't want to hear, and that's something certainly I don't want to hear. So, can you, please, outline how you're going to work to speed up CAMHS referrals, and how you are going to ensure that, when a young person is struggling and they do present in those early stages of their mental health problems, they get the support they need and they're not left until they hit the crisis point? Diolch, Llywydd.