The next item is the statement by the Deputy Minister for Social Services on the publication of the child practice review into the death of Logan Mwangi, and I call on the Deputy Minister to make her statement—Julie Morgan.

Diolch, Llywydd. The death of any child is a cause of great sadness and I want to start by expressing my own deep sorrow at Logan Mwangi’s death, and to take this opportunity to offer my sincere condolences to Mr Ben Mwangi and Logan’s wider family for their awful loss.

The publication last week of the child practice review following the murder of Logan has, I am sure, been an extremely difficult time for Logan’s father and family, especially as it has brought to public attention further details regarding the events that resulted in Logan’s life being taken at such an early age. My heart goes out to him and to everyone affected by Logan’s death.

I have read the report very carefully and I understand and accept the learning themes and recommendations made. At this stage, it would not be appropriate for me to respond in precise detail to all of the recommendations made, as further conversations are necessary with service providers. However, I am wholly committed to doing everything in my power to protect children and to pursue through the courts those who inflict such dreadful pain and misery on the most vulnerable in our society, and I will keep Members informed as work progresses.

The Deputy Presiding Officer (David Rees) took the Chair.

The purpose of the child practice review is not that of investigation, but to consider our services and help us to learn what we can to improve what we can do to protect children. I am grateful to the review panel for ensuring that they considered areas of learning that have been identified in other reviews throughout Wales and England while conducting this child practice review. It is right that we continue to consider the learning from other such tragic incidents in formulating the approach that is required to make improvements to ensure the protection of children in Wales.

It is, however, a sad and recurring fact that such reviews share, in many cases, similar themes, particularly regarding challenges in sharing knowledge and information across agencies, issues regarding systems and processes, and concerns about leadership and culture. We would all wish for a world where such events as these could never happen and that this would be the last case of its kind. That we cannot always identify individuals who could act like those convicted of Logan’s murder would suggest that it won’t be. However, that must not prevent us from doing everything in our power to reduce the risk as much as we can and provide the help that children in Logan’s position need and deserve.

The review clearly demonstrates that there is scope for practice improvement. Our focus must be to concentrate on the four key learning themes identified within the review that must be considered with the same care and urgency as the 10 local and five national recommendations identified. The learning themes identified are described in the report as being systematic and not isolated instances of individual error or poor practice. It is clear to see from the review that the recommendations are not allocated to one single agency. Child protection requires a multi-agency approach and, as such, all actions required to address these learning themes and implement the recommendations must be taken forward together, based on shared responsibility.

The National Health Service (Wales) Act 2006 and the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 set out the statutory duties for local authorities and local health boards in Wales. While these agencies, of course, must always adhere to such legislation, I will be looking to strengthen the ways in which agencies in Wales work more closely together to deliver our essential services. We all have a responsibility to implement the learning identified within this child practice review and to work together to carry out the actions required to effect change in the systems in which our professionals work and to support them in delivering their work. I expect all relevant agencies to consider the child practice review in full, to take immediate steps to consider how each theme and recommendation applies to them, and to identify how the learning themes and recommendations can be acted upon within the areas for which they are responsible. I will be contacting the senior leaders of agencies who have a responsibility in taking forward the recommendations of the review to ascertain their intended course of action in terms of their response to the child practice review.

Welsh Government has a key strategic role in protecting children, especially the most vulnerable, and I fully accept my role as a Minister in that. In the light of this review and following the report of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse and work already under way in relation to our children’s services transformation programme and elsewhere, I will be accelerating work on a national practice framework to help inform decision making in children’s services. The framework will be a key foundation for how we work in Wales to ensure the best outcomes for our most vulnerable children. It'll help us achieve greater commonality and more seamless working at local, regional and national level so that we can support children to remain with their families, and provide them with the support they need as we transition to fitting services around people, not people around services.

Care Inspectorate Wales have agreed to undertake a rapid review of structures and processes in place to inform decisions about how a child is added to or removed from a child protection register, and I will act on their findings, as necessary. I am aware of the calls for an independent inquiry into children’s services in Wales. Having now read the child practice review, I remain convinced that the time is now for action and not for further review. The findings and recommendations of the child practice review have been generated with consideration of other reviews in England and Wales, and it must be our priority to do what we can now and not wait for another report to tell us what we know already that we have to do. 

To improve the multi-agency approach that I have outlined today, I want to remind Members that we are in the final stages of developing the single unified safeguarding review, which has been developed jointly with stakeholders across Wales. The single unified safeguarding review has been developed to reduce the need for multiple reviews against a same single incident, enabling the swifter completion of reviews, such as child and adult practice reviews, to identify and implement all learning more quickly and on a pan-Wales basis. The draft statutory guidance to support the single unified safeguarding review will be subject to a public consultation exercise, which is planned for early in the new year. 

Whilst it's not routine practice to respond to child practice reviews, I and my Cabinet colleagues felt that it was entirely appropriate to recognise the publication of this review, and I'd like to take this opportunity to personally apologise to Mr Ben Mwangi and his family for the failings that contributed to the tragic loss of Logan's young life. Diolch.

I thank you very much for your statement this afternoon, Deputy Minister, and thank you for bringing it to the floor of the Senedd this afternoon. Just before I start the main thrust of my response to your statement, I just want to put on record this afternoon my sincere thoughts to Ben Mwangi, Logan's family and friends and all his social network, who've all been affected by this terrible and tragic murder. As a father of a young boy of a similar age, the thought of the pain and suffering that he would have gone through really goes through me. Whatever Government and local authority processes that we do put it place, it never deflects from the sheer evil and the disgusting people who carried out this sustained period of abuse, neglect and, indeed, murder as well. And I'm pleased to see that the right level of justice was applied to them and that they are, indeed, serving their time at Her Majesty's pleasure—His Majesty's pleasure, I should say.

We can all agree that what happened to Logan Mwangi was a tragedy that should never have happened and something that we should ensure never happens again. Logan's death was preventable had the council's failures been identified sooner and action was taken. The report into Logan shows Bridgend council's blaming of COVID for some of its shortcomings, alongside social workers not being able to follow the Government's guidance because it was not clear or responsive enough to ensure proper safeguarding for vulnerable children during the COVID pandemic. So, does the Deputy Minister accept that if the correct personal protective equipment had been accessible, then social care staff would have been able to assess Logan just 24 hours before his death? And does the Deputy Minister note a lack of leadership from social services in Bridgend to read between the lies being told by the evil perpetrator—that COVID was the reason that Logan couldn't be seen, to deflect from the reality of what was actually happening?

COVID did impact every service that Bridgend council and the Welsh Government provides, but the failure to escalate Logan's situation, despite significant evidence that he needed support, shows that under-staffed departments prove concerns that the council is too reliant on agency workers. So, does the Deputy Minister recognise the over-reliance on agency staff in Bridgend council, and what discussions have you had, or will you have in the future with the authority to recruit full-time workers into the social services department?

And, additionally, the lack of information sharing has brought to prominence a culture of authoritative management, which meant that junior staff were unable to challenge decisions made by their seniors, as in a lot of professions, which this case has proven. Staff must never feel afraid and feel that they are part of a team and all working together in that decision-making process. And in addition to Bridgend council having significant lessons to learn from the recommendation of the report, it's clear that the Welsh Government must enact a Wales-wide review of children's services to genuinely ensure that this never happens again. Leadership is needed and the buck stops with the Welsh Government and the First Minister, who must ensure that Wales is no longer the only nation in the UK without a nationwide children's review.

So, will you rethink your decision to not have a Wales-wide review of children's services, and give cast-iron guarantees to every child, parent and care provider across the 22 authorities that this Welsh Government is on their side and give us the best opportunity to safeguard all children across Wales, because it's unfortunate that the Welsh Government blocks such a review when Wales has the UK's highest rate of looked-after children? I'd just, finally, like to urge the Government to change its direction before we risk another tragedy like Logan Mwangi. Thank you.

I thank Gareth very much for his comments and thank him for the sorrow that he has expressed for this tragedy, recognising that, ultimately, the responsibility is with those three people who are incarcerated. I think the issue of COVID is an important issue and, certainly, the review refers to COVID on a number of occasions. I think it did make it more difficult because, certainly, all of the case conferences were taking place virtually and, in terms of actually speaking to Logan, it did make for some difficulties—the fact that COVID was operating. But, I think there are clear guidelines about how you should operate, looking at child protection, so I don't think that we can say that COVID is entirely to blame for what happened.

But, COVID certainly took its toll on the workforce. We know that many people were off sick, so the strain on the workforce was worse than in normal times. But, again, there's no way that you can say that if something there had been different, this wouldn't have happened. There is an over-reliance on agency staff, and we are doing our utmost to attract more social workers. As you'll know, we have introduced the bursary in order to encourage social workers to join and to remain, trying to give it more of an alliance with the bursaries in the health service. We've also given support for social workers, because I think we do all recognise what a difficult job social work is. I was a social worker myself, so I certainly do know the huge strain that social workers are put under, and I think it's essential that we do all that we can to support them in such a difficult job.

Gareth referred to information sharing, which is an absolutely key issue, and also about junior staff being afraid to challenge, which was referred to in the report. I think this is one of the learnings that has to come out of the report; there were learning themes that came out of the report and we've got to make sure that there is a different culture within the organisations that are referred to.

In terms of the Wales-wide review of children's services, I've already said that I'm accepting all of the recommendations that are in the report. Certainly, they don't all apply to the Welsh Government, so I will have to accept them and work with the partner agencies to make sure that we move forward to implement those recommendations. I feel at this stage that it wouldn't help to actually address these issues if we were to go for a children's social services-wide review, because the one in England took 16 months; I anticipate the one that's going to happen in Northern Ireland will take 16 months. A lot of the things that came out in those reports are ones that are echoed in the work that we are doing and are echoed in this review.

So, the recommendations that we are taking on board are far-reaching, looking at how case conferences are chaired and many other very important recommendations. I think that that, along with the work and the reviews that we've already done, gives us a really good base to start working on this now. And I don't think that having a further review at this stage will actually help, so I think we need to start work now. Thank you.

I would just like to start, perhaps, by reflecting on Logan Mwangi's former headteacher's words about him, calling him 'a gorgeous little boy' with a 'cheeky smile' who 'loved to talk'. Often, we forget about Logan himself. We've all seen pictures of him, but to hear about his personality and how he was happy at school, contrary to what his mother was saying, was behaving in school and enjoying himself, and yet, his life was cut tragically short from those who should have been protecting him and loving him and caring for him—. I echo all the sentiments already expressed by the Deputy Minister and by Gareth Davies in terms of thinking of his father in particular, and his family and friends, wishing that they too would have been able to intervene, as many, many of those who came into contact with him, I'm sure, are reflecting on from reading the review.

I think the thing that struck me reading the review was the fact that a series of opportunities were missed to protect, and crucially that it was expressed that Logan's voice was not heard, that we weren't listening to this little boy, whereas we are trying to ensure here in Wales that absolutely the rights of the child—that every child is aware of those. Yet, here we are: a child whose voice wasn't heard.

So for me, I would like to get greater clarity today. I know that you have responded in terms of Gareth Davies's point in terms of an independent inquiry, but I don't understand why that independent inquiry isn't taking place. It doesn't stop you from being able to implement the recommendations if there are further reviews taking place. And, time and time again since I've been elected here, I've heard the First Minister say that we won't have an independent inquiry into COVID, and rejecting calls for an independent inquiry into the 2020 floods, though we do have a review in the co-operation agreement between both our parties. So, what are the circumstances when Welsh Government will actually instigate an independent inquiry, if not in cases like this? This is so that we look at the breadth of things, and that can take into account as well the steps that are already being taken, that have been learnt from other reviews.

But worrying for me was hearing the children's commissioner state that these recommendations we've seen before in previous reports. We've heard commitments previously saying that lessons will be learned and we'll have changes, and yet these recommendations are still coming through. I think we need to understand from an inquiry why that's the case. So, I would ask you, Deputy Minister, to reconsider, because it's not a political point; I'm not saying this, this is what experts are telling us, this is what social workers on the ground are telling us, this is what the NSPCC have been telling us. So, this is very much something that I think every one of us should be open to—scrutiny and independent inquiries—and I'm concerned, yet again, to hear the Deputy Minister state that this isn't something that the Welsh Government is going to be taking forward.

I would also like to mention NSPCC Wales's call for a clear and resourced road map to transform children's social care. They've asked in the briefing that they supplied to all of us for Welsh Government to commit to publishing a detailed, entirely resourced road map transforming children's social care, with measurable outcomes, within the next six months. Is this something that the Deputy Minister can commit to today?

I also wanted to reflect on the worrying aspect of the report where it referenced Logan's race and ethnicity in particular, mentioning his father Ben Mwangi's Kenyan heritage, and the part in the report that says,

'Professionals did not fully explore the context of…race and ethnicity' in this case. Well, we know that, across Government, we are committed to working towards an anti-racist Wales, but yet again, in this case, it's not something that comes through strongly in the statement today either, but something that we truly need to consider and ensure that that is at the forefront of the minds of everyone who comes into contact with a child in circumstances such as this. So, in terms of Plaid Cymru's position, we do want to see an independent inquiry. We fully support the changes that are being implemented, but we are concerned, knowing, as has been raised by agencies with us, the concerns around the lack of a child poverty strategy here in Wales, knowing, with the cost-of-living crisis as well, that more families are going to be placed in difficult circumstances, with an increased risk of abuse and neglect for children. So, therefore, can I please ask that you do reconsider your position in terms of that independent inquiry, implement the recommendations, but please also progress on that independent inquiry? 

Thank you very much, Heledd, for that contribution, and thank you for starting by reminding us of the gorgeous little boy that has been lost, and I think it's very important that we do remember that, and also for mentioning what his headteacher said, because I think you'll all have noted that in the report there was praise given to the school, and the fact that the school made great efforts to keep in contact with him during COVID—visiting his home and sending work for him to do, and sending a teddy bear, one of the teddy bears that they use in schools to help children to talk about their feelings. And so I think it's very important that we remember that.

Yes, there were opportunities that were missed. I think that's quite clear. The report says that, those opportunities were missed, and their recommendations are addressing that. And Logan's voice was not heard, and I think the issue of race, the report says, and it's certainly a fact, that it wasn't explored what Logan felt to be living as the only child with his ethnicity in a family and in surroundings where everybody else was white. That certainly wasn't explored, and I think it's an important issue. 

We are transforming social care. As the Member will know, we have got some quite ambitious plans, and some of them are part of the co-operation agreement that we will work together on, and we are determined to do that. Some of them are planned by the end of this term, so certainly, in response to the NSPCC, I can respond that certain parts of our programme are planned to be during the next three and a half years, to finish by then. 

But going back to the inquiry into social services, I really don't feel that that is going to help much at this stage. I think we know what the difficulties are, and, of course, we've already had so many inquiries here in the Senedd. I can go through them—a whole list of inquiries that have been held. Just looking at these—the care crisis review by the Family Rights Group; Nuffield Foundation's 'Born into Care'; Public Law Wales's working group's report and recommendations. Endless things that have happened. I just think we've got to get on with these actions, and I think that's the most important thing for the Welsh Government to do. 

Logan Mwangi should be alive and well today, and being brought up in a loving, caring family and community. Ben Mwangi and his family should be looking after him. The teaching community of Tondu Primary School should be wrapping around him, as they did, as they tried to. It's right that the perpetrators of Logan Mwangi's brutal murder are behind bars for a long time, but it's right as well that we welcome the rigour of this report, which has not held back from pulling any punches, from going in forensically to what needs to be done. Much as the murder was shocking and horrifying for everybody who's read about this, equally, as you go through the report, the detail of the multiple failed opportunities to intervene at the right moment—and it's not one individual or one agency; it's multiple opportunities—and, as others have said, we've seen these opportunities missed before as well in other circumstances over many years. 

There are a series of recommendations, Minister, both at a local level for all of the agencies involved and for the multi-agency approach at a local level, but also significant ones at a national level. And I do welcome your commitment, Minister, to actually take actions now, to go forward and make the improvements right now, at a national level. That includes specific guidance to child protection practitioners about their duty—their duty—to inform and include all persons with parental responsibility in child protection assessments and processes; that Welsh Government commissions a pan-Wales review of approaches to undertaking child protection conferences—it's one of the things that's pulled out of this report, the failure of those multi-agency conferences to identify and take the right action—an annual national awareness campaign to raise public awareness on how to report safeguarding concerns. Because many people in this community say, 'How did we miss this?' But also, 'If it were to happen again, how should we raise the alarm about this happening?' So, Minister, I want to ask you how you'll take forward those recommendations at a local and national level, how they will be monitored, how this will be fed back here into Welsh Government, but also into the Senedd, so that we can give assurances to people. We can never say, 'This will never happen again'. I'd like to say that, but we know we can't. But what I do want to tell people is: we'll do our damnedest to do everything to make sure that this does not happen again.

I thank Huw Irranca-Davies for that contribution and, of course, as the local Member, he has great knowledge and understanding of this family and community. And I can absolutely assure him that the five national recommendations—the Welsh Government will take forward those parts of the recommendations that refer to us, and we will take them forward swiftly but thoroughly. And we will work with our partners to ensure that they take forward the recommendations for them as well. I notice that he particularly, at the end, referred to a national awareness campaign, and I am very determined that we will do this. This is something we've actually done before; we did it during COVID in 2020, to raise awareness about how to report safeguarding concerns, and we used then the hashtag #MakeTheCallWales. So, I anticipate that we will do something like that on an annual basis, as the report requests, because, as he said, people need to know what they should do and how they would report them. Because we have heard, after the event, that people were worried, and so we need to make sure that people know how to report the things that they are concerned about.

And then the pan-Wales review of approaches to undertake in child protection conferences: again, the conducting of child protection conferences remains the statutory duty of the local authorities, under the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014. But, of course, we do have a key responsibility, as the strategic lead, so I certainly see it as my role to ensure that that happens, that we will take that lead, from this Government. I won't go through them all in detail, because I know the Deputy Presiding Officer is nodding, but, obviously, this is something we have to return back to, and I commit to reporting back to the Senedd on how this develops.

Thank you, Deputy Minister. I know how committed you are to this field, but, last Thursday, Wales was in the national headlines for the wrong reasons, because we had failed a little boy. Logan Mwangi, as we've heard—and let's call him Logan Mwangi, because the report didn't; the report referred to him constantly as 'Child T'. Logan Mwangi moved from being a bubbly, smiley, laughing child who loved Spider-Man to one who developed a stammer. In the 11 months in which social services knew about him, he suffered four occasions where his life could have been saved, from August 2020 to the time where his arm was broken, bruises found all over him, sexual abuse, to the point where he died in July 2021. He was on the child protection register for two and a half months only, therefore I don't see that a review of child protection register processes are going to help us at all.

I know my time is up. I've a lot to say on this issue, as you can imagine, and it really does get me very emotional.

I've read lots of reviews like this; unfortunately, they come up with the same things, as you say. My questions to you are twofold. One is: if it's not time for a review of child protection services—. I'm a little bit different here. I don't want an inquiry; an inquiry sounds punitive and blaming—I want a review. I want us to know that as Senedd Members every single child has a chance of being protected, which Logan didn't. So, my first question to you is: if not now, when? Because I don't want to be standing here in 12, 16 months' time and hearing about another child death when we haven't done a review. So, that's my first question.

My second is: how can we as Senedd Members here know how well our local authorities are performing in child protection services? Because that is what we want to know the most. There has been no review in Wales of child protection services so far. You've read out lots of other reviews and inquiries, but none has focused on child protection services. I want to hear how our professionals in child protection services want to see a different way of working. That's why I want a review. So, please do respond to me with the answers to those two questions. If not a review now, when? And can we have a situation where Senedd Members know exactly that their local authorities are doing well, or not, and maybe need support, in child protection services? Thank you. Diolch yn fawr iawn.

Thank you, Jane, very much for that. I know you feel emotionally about it, and I know you have a great deal of commitment to this area of work, and I thank you for your comments. I really feel that we need to get on with the recommendations in this report. There are a lot of other things we're doing as well; we need to get on with all of them, and we need to ensure that children are safer than they are the moment. I think we have the basis to do that. I don't think we need another review in order to do that, and I'm totally committed to doing what I possibly can to carry out all the recommendations and to do what is necessary.

In terms of how are we to know that children are protected in our own individual areas, Care Inspectorate Wales, Healthcare Inspectorate Wales and Estyn will be reviewing four areas—I think I wrote this to you in a letter, if you remember—to see how they perform in child protection, and we will be looking at the results of that and seeing if we need to do that on a pan-Wales basis. I can assure you that we're going to do absolutely all we can to stop this tragedy that happened to Logan.

I found Thursday one of the most difficult days I've had as a Senedd Member. I sat and read every page of the report, and it made me incredibly sad, but it also made me quite angry, if I'm honest with you, reading about the failings and the lack of information sharing. We hear very often about a multi-agency approach—well, I think that multi-agency approach simply didn't work in this instance.

Colleagues have talked about the Wales-wide implications of this report. I wanted to focus perhaps a little bit more locally. In the years before coming to this Senedd, I sat as a member of the social services committee on Bridgend County Borough Council, and it doesn't fill me with any pleasure to tell you that, for a long time, members of that committee had raised concerns about the social services department in Bridgend County Borough Council—the reliance on agency staff in particular, the council's approach to budgeting, and a whole series of other concerns were mentioned as well. But the council felt they had a good reputation on social services, and I will not be one to judge today whether that was true or not. But I feel very strongly, Deputy Minister, that there was a culture of complacency at Bridgend County Borough Council in the way that social services were managed, and, in particular, a lack of political oversight from cabinet members on the work that was being done by hard-working dedicated officers and others in the council as well. So, I know, historically, where there have been councils with clear problems in terms of their social services departments, as has happened in Powys, that enhanced monitoring powers have been given through Care Inspectorate Wales. Can you let us know what you think the threshold would be for those to be applied in this case in Bridgend?

Thank you, Tom, for that question. As you know, Care Inspectorate Wales have been working in Bridgend council already and reported earlier this year. And they said that they had seen some improvements, but they were going to continue to monitor and will be reporting back to me, and that is what is happening at the moment. So, Care Inspectorate Wales are looking at Bridgend's practice, and will be reporting back to me.

Diolch, Deputy Minister, and thank you for your statement this afternoon. It is absolutely heartbreaking to hear about Logan's death, and I echo all the sentiments that all other Members have said today, and say that we're thinking of Logan's father and all Logan's friends and teachers, and all those who loved him.

Deputy Minister, you've mentioned already around the national recommendations, and that you're keen to start work now, but I just want to ask you a little bit more perhaps about some of the timescales in which you intend to implement some of those. As we've already heard, the review highlighted that Logan's voice was not heard. How can you ensure that children and young people's voices are heard and listened to? I know that you will be very concerned about that. In our work here on the Children, Education and Young People's Committee, we've already seen the power of hearing these voices directly through the work that we're doing on care-experienced children and young people, as well as others. How can you help those young people's voices be strengthened and amplified, as part of any learning from the absolute tragedy of Logan's death?

I thank Jayne for those questions. I think it's important to respond as quickly as possible, and we are responding already because we've already had meetings with a number of the agencies involved. But it's also important to get it right. So, I'm not really able to give a detailed timescale at this time, because I think it's more important for us to get in with the agencies and work out the timetable from there.

The voice of the child is absolutely crucial, and I think it's absolutely true to say that Logan's voice was not heard. We are determined that the voice of the child should be heard as much as possible, and I'm sure she's aware of the work of the Welsh Government in promoting children's voices, and promoting children's voices to be heard, as she is doing on the committee, particularly through this report that you're doing at the moment.

We will make sure children's voices will be heard through our close working relationships, for example, with Voices from Care, as we work very closely with Voices from Care, and, in fact, have a summit next Saturday with Voices from Care, trying to hear the voices of those children who are care experienced, and also the information that is fed in from the children's commissioner and from Young Wales. So, there are many ways that we can work to ensure that children and young people's voices are heard. But she is right: Logan's voice wasn't heard.

And, finally, Jenny Rathbone. 

Thank you. I just wanted to make two points that I would like you to consider when you take forward how you're going to implement these recommendations. It isn't just the voice of the child that needs to be heard; it is the voice of the front-line social worker, and the empowerment of the front-line social worker that needs to happen, to ensure that they feel confident that they can insist on responding to their instincts that things are not right, particularly when children who are at risk are not in school. It must be essential and mandatory that the child is seen by somebody else at home, under all circumstances.

Which brings me to my second point, which is around looking at how you would feel if you were a front-line worker confronted with John Cole. You would not want to enter that house alone; you would be terrified. And, therefore, nobody should be asked to do that, and, therefore, they need to be accompanied, and that means the police. And that brings us to the second challenge, which is that not all these partner agencies are under the devolved responsibility of the Welsh Government, and that includes the police. So, I hope that you will give due consideration to how we can ensure that the police are present when social workers need to enter premises where the adults in that child's life are resisting allowing them in.

Thank you very much, Jenny, for those points, very important points, I think, about social workers feeling confident to be able to go into a house. We are developing, as I said in my opening remarks, a practice framework, so that all social workers will know what is expected at any particular incident, or at any particular thing that they are doing, there will be clear expectations of what happens at that time.

And obviously, in terms of the police, in the report, it was said that they responded to everything that they were asked—there was no criticism of the police at all in the report. But she makes the important point about the fact that policing is not devolved, and one of the recommendations is that we should look at the ways of reporting and data information, and the Welsh Government is being asked to lead that. Well, of course, policing is not devolved, so that means that we will have to liaise with the Home Office in order to look at that particular area. So, the fact that it's not devolved makes it much more complicated and more difficult to take forward. But, certainly, those two points I will be bearing in mind when we move forward.

I thank the Deputy Minister.

Thank you.