Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:32 pm on 28 March 2023.
Well, Llywydd, I thank Jayne Bryant for that. And I've been fortunate enough to have a number of opportunities to visit Newport and to see the sorts of projects to which Jayne Bryant referred. In fact, I was with John Griffiths only on Saturday at the Maindee Triangle, where the Ffrind i Mi project operates, and not only was I lucky enough to be at Tredegar House for the Growing Space project, but, of course, the Member for Newport West invited me to the Road to Nature project, another example of where social prescribing—those non-clinical, community-based projects—connects people with nature in a way that we know to be so good for their own physical and mental health.
Llywydd, around 20 per cent of all GP consultations are with people who primarily have a social rather than a medical need for help. And what social prescribing does is it allows those people to be put in touch with that vast range of different services—befriending, book clubs, choirs, running clubs, community gardens, the national exercise and referral scheme. The list goes on and on of things that people can be put in touch with, and, if they're able to take up those opportunities, then it makes that long-term difference. What the Welsh Government seeks to do is to create a national framework where we have an agreed model, a common understanding, and a shared language that promotes social prescribing even further. There's been a consultation on all of that, and the plan is to publish the final framework, and an action plan to support it, later this summer.