5. What percentage of mandated health visiting contacts through the Healthy Child Wales programme were conducted in person in the last year? OQ58025

We don't hold the data on percentage of contacts that took place on a face-to-face basis. Throughout the pandemic, most health visitor contacts took place using telemedicine to help reduce transmission rates. Data on the Healthy Child Wales programme is published quarterly, most recently for the period July to September 2021.

Last week was Perinatal Mental Health Awareness Week. Untreated perinatal mental health problems can have a devastating impact on women, their families and children, and remains the leading cause of maternal death in the first postnatal year. One in five mums and one in 10 dads are affected by perinatal mental health problems, and this has unfortunately increased as a result of COVID. During the perinatal period, health visitors are the ones uniquely placed to identify women experiencing maternal mental health problems and infants not reaching their developmental milestones. They also ensure that women and their families receive the care they need at the earliest opportunity. Given this, what progress has the Welsh Government made in reaching a position where we have a specialist health visitor in perinatal and infant mental health in each health board area, and what progress has been made in appointing maternity and neonatal champions across Wales?

Diolch yn fawr, Buffy. I'm sure you'll be aware that the Deputy Minister for mental health has been absolutely committed to this issue, certainly when she was Chair of the committee before, and obviously now is responsible for making sure that that's enacted in practice. I think she visited the new Tonna centre that was opened only very recently, the first of its kind in Wales where we can give that perinatal mental health support that people are looking for. Now, that continues to be a priority for the Welsh Government, and I'm sure that the—. I think the Deputy Minister will be writing to the Children, Young People and Education Committee on an update against the recommendations of that committee and that inquiry that the committee had into perinatal mental health.

And in relation to the maternity and neonatal safety support programme, we're finalising agreements at the moment with Improvement Cymru in order to recruit into the programme posts at national and health board levels to commence the work on the diagnostic phase of that programme. So, there's more to come.

Health Minister, obviously, one of the key things about community support from the health profession is to have the right quality of staff and quantity of staff in the community. It's International Nurses Day tomorrow, as I understand it, and one of the measures that a previous Welsh Government took on board was that it brought forward the Nurse Staffing Levels (Wales) Act 2016 that is specific to certain hospital ward settings. Are you minded to support the extension of that Act into the community, so that on issues raised by the Member for the Rhondda we can have confidence that community support staff, and nurses in particular, are adequately resourced and in place to advise families when they face these critical positions when a newborn baby is born into the family?

Thanks very much. Well, we were really pleased that we brought in a safe level of nursing staffing in Wales—the first in the UK to do that—and we're very pleased that that is being assessed and being considered at the moment. Obviously, then, we are looking to see what more we need to do in this space. Now, I have regular discussions with the Royal College of Nursing, and they come up with this on a regular basis; it's always top of their agenda. It is more complex to ensure that this is delivered within the community, because how do you assess that? A community is not the same thing as a ward, so there are very different things to measure. It's much more complex a situation to assess what a safe level of nursing staffing would be. So, we are in the process of further discussions all the time on this issue, but it's far more complex than it was in relation to that, compared to introducing it in a hospital situation.