2. What is the Welsh Government doing to improve access to mental health services in the Vale of Clwyd? OQ58331

Llywydd, we continue to provide significant and sustained funding to support mental health services. Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board will receive an additional £4.9 million in recurrent mental health funding, starting this year, to help improve access to mental health support.

Thank you for that answer, First Minister. Of course, as we mark the seventy-fourth birthday of the national health service today, I'd like to give my thanks to the hard-working front-line staff, past and present, who have served to support the nation's medical needs and help save lives. But, First Minister, at no fault of these hard-working front-line staff, mental health services in my constituency and across north Wales are not fit for purpose. Local primary mental health support services figures show that Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board has the second-worst waiting times in Wales, with just under two thirds of adults waiting less than 28 days for an assessment as of March 2022, which is below the national average, and, for children and young people, just one in three are waiting 28 days for an assessment. These delays are just not acceptable, First Minister. Alongside these waiting times, one of my major concerns related to services in the Vale of Clwyd is the Ablett Unit facilities at Ysbyty Glan Clwyd in Bodelwyddan. Earlier this month, I sat down with one of my constituents, who has a long-term mental health condition and, due to this, has had to stay in facilities across the area. And he noted that the Ablett Unit at YGC is by far the worst, with a tired and decrepit building that is not fit for modern-day use or treatments. And in my regular meeting with representatives of the health board, and, in fact, just as recently as yesterday, they divulged that there are still no imminent plans to progress the proposal of the new mental health development at YGC, and that's simply not good enough, First Minister. So, what is the Welsh Government planning to do, regarding this delay from the health board, to ensure that my residents in the Vale of Clwyd get a service that's fit for purpose in the area that they live in? Thank you. 

Well, Llywydd, I echo, of course, what the Member said about recognising the work that our very committed staff in the national health service do every single day, on this anniversary of the NHS. I agree with him that the time that assessments are taking under the local primary mental health service in Betsi Cadwaladr are not acceptable. There have been some signs of improvement in recent months, but that improvement urgently needs to continue. Once you have an assessment in the health board, then the performance in terms of from-referral-to-treatment is better in the local primary mental health services, particularly in relation to adults, where, for most of the last 12 months, performance has been above the target set by the Welsh Government. So, once you get into the system, then the help that you receive is usually timely and is appreciated by those in receipt of it. But the assessment period is too long, particularly for children, and there we look for a proper improvement in the way that the health board performs.

As far as the facilities at YGC are concerned, I think, the Member has an over-pessimistic view of developments there. We want to invest in those services, we want to make sure the physical fabric of the services is sufficient for patients, and we look forward to being able to approve the proposals that the health board will bring forward in order to do just that. 

First Minister, there's been a very welcome and significant increase recently in funding for support services for mental health within schools, which will help many young people in the Vale of Clwyd and beyond. We know that the most effective mental ill health prevention and early intervention comes through school counselling services. So, will the Welsh Government commit to facilitating the training and recruitment of as many new school counsellors as possible? 

Well, Llywydd, I thank Ken Skates for that, and I agree with him very much that the best help you can offer, particularly to young people, in the mental health field is that early and preventative intervention that gets them the advice they need. It allows them to meet with a trusted adult who has the training that is necessary to respond to their needs, and that's exactly what the Welsh Government is doing. Over the next three years, we'll invest another £10 million over and above what is there now to improve and expand school counselling provision, and we do so because we know that it is effective. In the last year for which there are figures, 10,600 children or young people received counselling services in schools. Young women accounted for two thirds of those receiving help. Twenty per cent of all the children who got help from the school counselling service were in year 10, so facing examinations, with all the anxiety that we know goes alongside that. But, critically, 87 per cent of children and young people who used the service did not require onward referral. In other words, the help that they got was sufficient to meet their needs. That's why, both for children and for adults, we are putting such an emphasis on investment in tier 0 and tier 1 services—services that you don't need to join a waiting list to get to, services that you can get by immediate access, either through third sector organisations or, in the case of the question raised by Ken Skates, through the self-referral of someone to a school counselling service. If you can do it, if you can do it early and do it effectively, then those young people don't need the more intensive and, inevitably, more pressurised services further up the chain.