2. What progress has the Welsh Government made on embedding prudent healthcare into every aspect of health and well-being in Cardiff Central? OQ59234

I thank Jenny Rathbone for that question. Llywydd, value-based healthcare continues to take forward the prudent healthcare principles of ill-health prevention, joint partnership with patients on the journey to improvement, and diversification of the workforce so that every practitioner operates at the top of their clinical licence.

First Minister, I'm sure you will want to celebrate the work of Cardiff and Vale health board, mindful of the well-being of their staff, and inviting them to take part in courses on how to grow vegetables on the Llandough hospital site, obviously funded by the Cardiff and Vale health board charity—something, I'm sure, close to both our hearts. But I also want to highlight their recent work on tackling the enduring epidemic of mental illness. Referrals to secondary care remain almost as high as they were during the pandemic. So, they've been training barbers to recognise signs of mental distress amongst their customers, and they're training people with lived experience of enduring mental health problems as tutors, to work alongside professional clinical tutors, involving individual patients and families and friends in a whole-system recovery, through something called the recovery college. How can this really creative response to the shortage of applicants to fill staff vacancies be deepened across Government, to help shrink the disparity in the numbers of years lived well between different socioeconomic groups, so harshly exposed by COVID? In Cardiff, it's 12 years.

Llywydd, I thank Jenny Rathbone for that. I certainly share her enthusiasm for the work of Cardiff and Vale health board, at their Llandough site, in using the ground that they have available there for well-being initiatives. The fruit that is being grown in part of the western edge of that site offers patients as well as people who work for the health board an opportunity to be outside, in the fresh air, and with access to the things that we know improve individuals' sense of well-being.

As far as the mental health impact of the pandemic is concerned, it continues to be seen in all parts of Wales. The Welsh Government's new investment in mental health is often very much concentrated in that prudent healthcare part of the spectrum: investment in tier 0 and tier 1 services, and the 111 'press 2' service that's available 24 hours every day in the Cardiff and Vale health board area, and with a publicity campaign, Llywydd, which will take place throughout this month, to increase patients' awareness and use of that very valuable service. I'm very struck by what the Member said, Llywydd, about the way in which it is possible to harness the efforts of people who aren't in the health service at all to be part of the work of identifying and attending to patients needs as early as possible when those needs arise. I do recall, some years ago now, when I was health Minister, visiting Pen-y-groes, a Welsh-speaking area in the Ammanford coalfield, to see a dementia service and being told by the GPs who ran it that their most important source of referrals were hairdressers on the main street of the village, because those hairdressers knew their clientele—they could spot the person who wasn't quite managing as well as they used to, with the money, with the organisation, and they would make an early referral into the dementia service, so that people could get that preventative intervention that is possible when you manage to identify people early on that journey. The barbers in Cardiff, the postal workers in Cardiff, who we know have those day in, day out interactions on the doorstep, all these are people who we can make helpful to the health service in that prudent healthcare way.