Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:21 pm on 29 November 2022.
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.