Y Pwyllgor Plant, Pobl Ifanc ac Addysg - Y Bumed Senedd

Children, Young People and Education Committee - Fifth Senedd

30/11/2017

Aelodau'r Pwyllgor a oedd yn bresennol

Committee Members in Attendance

Darren Millar
Hefin David
John Griffiths
Julie Morgan
Llyr Gruffydd
Lynne Neagle Cadeirydd y Pwyllgor
Committee Chair
Mark Reckless
Michelle Brown

Y rhai eraill a oedd yn bresennol

Others in Attendance

Amber Stock Llysgennad Ymwybyddiaeth Ofalgar Ysgol, Ysgol Pen y Bryn
School Mindfulness Ambassador, Ysgol Pen y Bryn
Arun Ramesh Llysgennad Ymwybyddiaeth Ofalgar Ysgol, Ysgol Pen y Bryn
School Mindfulness Ambassador, Ysgol Pen y Bryn
Chris Britten Pennaeth Ysgol Arbennig y Deri, Bro Morgannwg
Headteacher of Ysgol Y Deri Special School, Vale of Glamorgan
Huw Irranca-Davies Y Gweinidog Gofal Cymdeithasol a Phlant
Minister for Children and Social Care
Jane Sloggett Dirprwy Bennaeth Ysgol Gyfun Porthcawl
Deputy Head of Porthcawl Comprehensive
Joseph Wilton Llywodraeth Cymru
Welsh Government
Karen Cornish Llywodraeth Cymru
Welsh Government
Kathryn Morgan Uwch Seicolegydd Addysg, Cyngor Bwrdeistref Sirol Pen-y-bont ar Ogwr
Senior Educational Psychologist, Bridgend County Borough Council
Nichola Jones Pennaeth Cynhwysiant ac Anableddau, Cyngor Sir Penfro
Head of Inclusion and Disabilities, Pembrokeshire County Council
Pippa Raggett Pennaeth Cynorthwyol, Ysgol Dewi Sant
Assistant Headteacher, Ysgol Dewi Sant
Richard Thurston Dirprwy Brif Swyddog Ymchwil Gymdeithasol, Llywodraeth Cymru
Deputy Chief Social Research Officer, Welsh Government
Rob Williams Cyfarwyddwr Polisi Cymru, NAHT
Policy Director Wales, NAHT
Sarah Silverton Athro a hyfforddwr ymwybyddiaeth ofalgar llawrydd, sy’n gweithio drwy'r Ganolfan Ymchwil ac Arfer Ymwybyddiaeth Ofalgar, Prifysgol Bangor
Freelance mindfulness teacher and trainer, working through the Centre for Mindfulness Research and Practice, Bangor University
Steve Rees Pennaeth Ysgol Gynradd Evenlode, Bro Morgannwg
Headteacher of Evenlode Primary School, Vale of Glamorgan
Tabitha Sawyer Pennaeth Cynorthwyol ac Arweinydd Ymwybyddiaeth Ofalgar, Ysgol Pen y Bryn
Assistant Headteacher and Mindfulness Lead, Ysgol Pen y Bryn
Tim Pratt Cyfarwyddwr, ASCL
Director, ASCL
Will McLean Cyngor Sir Fynwy
Monmouthshire County Council

Swyddogion y Senedd a oedd yn bresennol

Senedd Officials in Attendance

Llinos Madeley Clerc
Clerk
Sarah Bartlett Dirprwy Glerc
Deputy Clerk
Sarah Hatherley Ymchwilydd
Researcher

Cynnwys

Contents

1. Cyflwyniad, ymddiheuriadau, dirprwyon a datgan buddiannau 1. Introductions, apologies, substitutions and declarations of interest
2. Ymchwiliad i Iechyd Emosiynol ac Iechyd Meddwl Plant a Phobl Ifanc - crynodeb o ganlyniadau'r arolwg 2. Inquiry into the Emotional and Mental Health of Children and Young People - summary of survey results
3. Ymchwiliad i Iechyd Emosiynol a Meddyliol Plant a Phobl Ifanc - Sesiwn dystiolaeth 3 3. Inquiry into the Emotional and Mental Health of Children and Young People - Evidence session 3
4. Ymchwiliad i Iechyd Emosiynol a Meddyliol Plant a Phobl Ifanc - Sesiwn dystiolaeth 4 4. Inquiry into the Emotional and Mental Health of Children and Young People - Evidence session 4
5. Ymchwiliad i Iechyd Emosiynol a Meddyliol Plant a Phobl Ifanc - Sesiwn dystiolaeth 5 (drwy fideo gynadledda) 5. Inquiry into the Emotional and Mental Health of Children and Young People - Evidence session 5 (via video conference)
6. Cynnig o dan Reol Sefydlog 17.42(ix) i benderfynu gwahardd y cyhoedd o'r cyfarfod ar gyfer eitem 7 6. Motion under Standing Order 17.42(ix) to resolve to exclude the public from the meeting for Item 7
8. Ymchwiliad i Dechrau'n Deg: allgymorth - Sesiwn dystiolaeth 4 8. Inquiry into Flying Start: outreach - Evidence session 4
9. Papurau i'w nodi 9. Paper(s) to note
10. Cynnig o dan Reol Sefydlog 17.42(ix) a (vi) i benderfynu gwahardd y cyhoedd o weddill y cyfarfod. 10. Motion under Standing Order 17.42(ix) and (vi) to resolve to exclude the public from the meeting for the remainder of the meeting.

Cofnodir y trafodion yn yr iaith y llefarwyd hwy ynddi yn y pwyllgor. Yn ogystal, cynhwysir trawsgrifiad o’r cyfieithu ar y pryd. Lle y mae cyfranwyr wedi darparu cywiriadau i’w tystiolaeth, nodir y rheini yn y trawsgrifiad.

The proceedings are reported in the language in which they were spoken in the committee. In addition, a transcription of the simultaneous interpretation is included. Where contributors have supplied corrections to their evidence, these are noted in the transcript.

Dechreuodd y cyfarfod am 09:31.

The meeting began at 09:31.

1. Cyflwyniad, ymddiheuriadau, dirprwyon a datgan buddiannau
1. Introductions, apologies, substitutions and declarations of interest

Good morning, everyone. Can I welcome you all to today's meeting of the Children, Young People and Education Committee? We’ve received no apologies for absence. Can I ask Members if they would like to declare any interests?

If I can just declare, then, that my son attends Evenlode Primary School, where one of our witnesses today is headteacher.

2. Ymchwiliad i Iechyd Emosiynol ac Iechyd Meddwl Plant a Phobl Ifanc - crynodeb o ganlyniadau'r arolwg
2. Inquiry into the Emotional and Mental Health of Children and Young People - summary of survey results

Item 2 this morning is a video showing a summary of our survey results on our inquiry into the emotional and mental health of children and young people. At the beginning of September, we launched one survey for children and young people between the ages of 11 and 18, and one survey for education professionals. The surveys asked a series of questions about the provision of emotional and mental health support in secondary schools and colleges. The questions were asked so that we could hear directly from those providing the support and those receiving it.

The survey results are intended to provide an extra source of information alongside the written and oral evidence that we are gathering. They are there to help us test some of the assertions that we hear about the support available in schools. Over 2,000 young people and professionals responded to our survey and I would like to place on record the thanks of all of us to everybody who's given their time up to help us hear directly from them.

A report of the survey has been published as part of the paper pack for today's meeting and we're now going to watch a short video that summarises the results of the survey and some of the key themes arising.

Dangoswyd cyflwyniad clyweledol. Mae’r cyflwyniad ar gael drwy ddilyn y linc hon: cyflwyniad clyweledol.

An audio-visual presentation was shown. The presentation can be accessed by following this link: audio-visual presentation.

Roedd y cyflwyniad yn cynnwys y testun a ganlyn:

Y Pwyllgor Plant, Pobl Ifanc ac Addysg

Iechyd Emosiynol a Meddyliol Plant a Phobl Ifanc - Tachwedd 2017

Ym mis Medi 2017, lansiwyd dau arolwg gennym

Roedd un ohonynt ar gyfer pobl rhwng 11 a 18 oed, ac roedd y llall ar gyfer gweithwyr ym maes addysg

Yn yr arolygon hyn, gofynnwyd nifer o gwestiynau gennym am y cymorth emosiynol a’r cymorth iechyd meddwl sy'n cael ei ddarparu mewn ysgolion a cholegau ledled Cymru

Cipolwg yn unig yw canlyniadau'r arolygon

ac mae'r ystadegau yn cynrychioli barn y rhai a ymatebodd yn hytrach na'r cyhoedd yn gyffredinol

Ymatebodd 1,611 o bobl ifanc i’r arolwg, gan gynrychioli ysgolion uwchradd a cholegau ar draws yr holl awdurdodau lleol

Ymatebodd 425 o weithwyr addysg a oedd wedi'u lleoli mewn gwahanol awdurdodau lleol i'r arolwg

Gwnaethom ofyn pa wybodaeth sydd ar gael i bobl ifanc...

50% - nifer y bobl ifanc a ymatebodd i'r arolwg gan ddweud bod eu hysgol neu goleg yn rhoi gwybodaeth i fyfyrwyr

Mewn rhai o'r ymatebion, cafwyd enghreifftiau o brosiectau 3ydd sector sy'n darparu cymorth a mentrau mewn ysgolion fel gofal bugeiliol a chlybiau ymwybyddiaeth ofalgar

Fodd bynnag, nododd nifer o weithwyr addysg bryderon ynghylch y diffyg cysondeb sydd i'w weld mewn ysgolion a cholegau ledled Cymru

Gwnaethom ofyn pa gymorth sydd ar gael i bobl ifanc...

Soniodd 69% o'r bobl ifanc a ymatebodd am wasanaethau cwnsela mewn ysgolion

Dywedodd 24% nad oeddent yn gwybod a oedd eu hysgol neu goleg yn cynnig gwasanaethau cwnsela

Dywedodd 7% nad oedd eu hysgol neu goleg yn cynnig gwasanaethau cwnsela

Roedd y mathau eraill o gymorth y soniwyd amdanynt yn cynnwys gwersi iechyd meddwl gan athrawon neu diwtoriaid neu sefydliadau allanol, a chyrsiau cwnsela ar-lein

Dywedodd 33% o weithwyr addysg a ymatebodd eu bod o'r farn bod eu hysgol neu goleg yn diwallu anghenion y myfyrwyr o ran llesiant emosiynol ac iechyd meddwl

Dywedodd 43% nad oeddent o'r farn bod anghenion y myfyrwyr yn cael eu diwallu 

Dywedodd 24% nad oeddent yn gwybod un ffordd neu'r llall.

Pan ofynnwyd i’r gweithwyr addysg a oedd gan eu hysgol bolisi iechyd meddwl:

dywedodd 41% eu bod yn ansicr am hyn, dywedodd 37% “nac oes”  dywedodd 22% “oes”.

Gwnaethom ofyn am fentora gan gyfoedion…

Yn sgil canlyniadau'r arolwg, roedd yn amlwg bod mentora gan gyfoedion yn bwysig i bobl ifanc

Fodd bynnag, pan wnaethom ofyn iddynt a oedd mentora gan gyfoedion ar gael:

dywedodd 35% bod cymorth ar gael gan fyfyrwyr eraill

dywedodd 33% nad oedd y cymorth hwn ar gael, a

dywedodd 32% nad oeddent yn gwybod un ffordd neu’r llall.

Gwnaethom ofyn am wasanaethau cwnsela mewn ysgolion...

19% - nifer y bobl ifanc a ymatebodd i'r arolwg gan ddweud eu bod wedi defnyddio gwasanaethau cwnsela mewn ysgol neu goleg.

O'r rhai a oedd wedi defnyddio'r gwasanaethau hyn:

dywedodd 50% eu bod yn ddefnyddiol,

dywedodd 38% nad oeddent yn ddefnyddiol

nid oedd 12% yn gwybod un ffordd neu'r llall.

Roedd y pryderon a godwyd ynghylch cwnsela mewn ysgolion yn cynnwys:

“Mae yna wasanaethau cwnsela mewn ysgolion / colegau ond nid oes digon ohonynt o bell ffordd”

"Mae apwyntiadau ar gael yn ystod amser gwersi yn unig, ac mae gwybod y byddai’n rhaid imi ddal i fyny â gwaith yn pwyso ar fy meddwl”

"Mae ein gwasanaeth cwnsela wedi’i ddileu"

"Nid yw’n brofiad pleserus gorfod mynd a churo ar ddrws, gyda phroblemau sydd eisoes yn peri pryder, ac nid ydych am i eraill wybod am eich pryder"

Gwnaethom ofyn am nyrsys ysgol...

67% - nifer y bobl ifanc a ymatebodd y byddent yn gyfforddus yn siarad â nyrs ysgol.

Fodd bynnag, roedd argaeledd nyrsys ysgol yn destun pryder i bobl ifanc ac i’r gweithwyr addysg:

“nid yw'r nyrs ysgol byth ar gael”

“mae’r nyrs ysgol yn dod am 40 munud yn ystod amser cinio ar ddydd Iau”

“nid oes digon o amser i siarad â hi”

Gwnaethom ofyn am hyfforddiant...

95% - nifer y gweithwyr addysg a ymatebodd gan ddweud bod hyrwyddo iechyd meddwl da yn rhywbeth y dylid ei ddysgu fel rhan o'r cwricwlwm ysgol

26% - nifer y gweithwyr addysg nad oeddent wedi cael unrhyw arweiniad na hyfforddiant i'w helpu i roi cymorth i ddisgyblion.

Dyma rai o'r sylwadau a gafwyd gan y gweithwyr addysg:

“Nid ydym yn arbenigwyr iechyd meddwl, ond mae disgwyl inni sefyll yn y bwlch o bryd i'w gilydd”

“Nid oes gennyf y sgiliau na'r adnoddau i ddarparu gofal i'r bobl ifanc hyn”

“Mae angen dysgu cydnerthedd i bobl ifanc pan maent yn iau, a hynny er mwyn rhoi hyder iddynt”

Dyma rhai o'r pryderon eraill y tynnwyd sylw atynt...

Dywedodd 52% o'r bobl ifanc a ymatebodd fod eu hysgol neu goleg yn dda neu'n dda iawn o ran eu helpu i ymdopi â phethau fel pwysau arholiadau, bwlio a phwysau gan gyfoedion.

Mewn sawl ymateb, nodwyd yr angen i ddeall mwy am y materion iechyd meddwl sy'n gysylltiedig â defnyddio cyffuriau.

Tynnwyd sylw at bwysigrwydd gweithwyr iechyd, ac awgrymodd un gweithiwr y dylid:

eu rhoi mewn ysgolion er mwyn ategu “gwasanaethau CAMHS prin” a gwasanaethau cwnsela sy'n cael eu “tanariannu”

Cynhaliwyd yr arolygon i sicrhau bod y rhai sy'n cael cymorth, a’r rhai sy'n ei roi yn cael cyfle i ddweud eu dweud.

Roeddem am sicrhau bod profiadau go iawn yn llywio ein gwaith a'r cwestiynau yr ydym yn eu gofyn i bobl sy'n gyfrifol am ddarparu gwasanaethau.

Hoffwn ddiolch i'r bobl (mwy na 2,000 ohonynt) a roddodd o'u hamser i ymateb i'n harolygon

Gellir gweld dadansoddiad llawn o ganlyniadau'r arolygon hyn ar ein gwefan:

www.cynulliad.cymru/seneddppia

@SeneddPPIA

The presentation included the following text:

Children, Young People and Education Committee

Emotional and Mental Health of Children and Young People – November 2017

In September 2017 we launched two surveys

One for young people aged 11-18 years and one for education professionals

In them we asked a number of questions about the provision of emotional and mental health support in schools and colleges across Wales

The survey results are only a snapshot

and the statistics represent the views of those who responded, not the public as whole

1,611 young people responded to the survey from secondary schools and colleges across all local authorities.

425 education professionals based in different local authority areas responded to the survey

We asked what information is available for young people…

50% of the young people surveyed told us that their school or college gives information to students

Some responses gave examples of third sector projects that provide support and school initiatives such as pastoral care and mindfulness clubs

But a number of education professionals highlighted concerns about a lack of consistency across schools and colleges in Wales.

We asked what help is available for young people…

69% of the young people who responded mentioned school counselling services

24% said they did not know if their school/college offered counselling services

7% said their school/college did not offer counselling services

Other help mentioned included lessons about mental health from teachers/tutors or outside organisations and online counselling services

33% of education professionals who responded believed that their school or college was meeting the emotional wellbeing and mental health needs of its students

While 43% didn’t think they were meeting the needs of students

24% didn’t know.

When education professionals were asked if their school had a mental health policy:

41% were unsure, 37% said no and 22% said yes.

We asked about peer mentoring…

The importance of peer mentoring to young people was evident in the survey results

However, when asked if peer mentoring was available:

35% said help was available from other students,

33% said no and

32% said they didn’t know.

We asked about school counselling…

19% of young people who responded had used school or college based counselling.

Of those who had:

50% said it was helpful,

38% said it was not helpful

12% did not know.

Concerns raised about school counselling included:

“There are school/college counselling services but nowhere near enough”

“Appointments are only available during lesson time…I get stressed having to catch up with work”

“Our counselling service got cut”

“It’s not a fun experience having to go and knock on the door…and not wanting others to know about your anxiety”

We asked about school nursing…

67% of the young people who responded would be comfortable talking to the school nurse.

But availability of school nurses was a concern to both young people and education professionals:

“the school nurse is never in”

“the school nurse only comes in Thursday for 40 minutes over lunch”

“there is not enough time to speak”

We asked about training…

95% of the education professionals who responded said that promoting good mental health should be taught as part of the school curriculum.

26% reported they had not received any guidance or training to help them support their students.

Comments about training from education professionals included:

“We are not mental health specialists but we are sometimes expected to hold the fort”

“I’m ill prepared and ill equipped to take care of these young people”

“Resilience needs to be taught at a younger age to help pupils build their confidence”

Other pressures that were highlighted…

52% of young people who responded said their school/college was good or very good at helping them cope with exam pressure, bullying and peer pressure.

A number of responses highlighted the need to understand more about mental health issues associated with using drugs.

The importance of youth workers was highlighted, with one professional suggesting that

they should be put into schools to support “underfunded” school counselling services and “depleted CAMHS”.

We conducted these surveys to make sure we heard from those on the ground – those who receive and those who provide support

We wanted to make sure that real life experience shapes our thinking and informs the questions we ask of people who are responsible for delivering services.

Thank you to the 2000+ people who took the time to respond to our surveys

A full analysis of our survey results can be found on our website:

www.assembly.wales/seneddcype

@SeneddCYPE

09:35

I hope that provides a useful summary of the survey results for Members, and that we'll be able to draw on that information throughout our evidence gathering, and to inform our report and recommendations. 

3. Ymchwiliad i Iechyd Emosiynol a Meddyliol Plant a Phobl Ifanc - Sesiwn dystiolaeth 3
3. Inquiry into the Emotional and Mental Health of Children and Young People - Evidence session 3

We'll move on now, then, to item 3, which is our third evidence session in our inquiry into the emotional and mental health of children and young people. I'm very pleased to welcome Tim Pratt, director of the Association of School and College Leaders, Jane Sloggett, deputy head at Porthcawl Comprehensive School, Rob Williams, policy director at the National Association of Head Teachers, Steve Rees, headteacher of Evenlode Primary School in the Vale of Glamorgan, and Chris Britten, headteacher of Ysgol y Deri special school in the Vale of Glamorgan. Thank you all very much for coming. We've got a lot of ground to cover, so, if you're happy, we'll go straight into questions from Members. The first questions are from John Griffiths.

Thank you very much, Chair. Morning, everyone. I wonder if you could tell the committee whether you believe that schools and colleges in Wales now accept that they have a responsibility to encourage and promote emotional well-being and emotional resilience in their pupils.

I think it's always been an area that teachers have accepted as being part of their role—the whole child and the well-being of the child. But I think that there is perhaps more of a focus over recent years, with health and well-being becoming part of Donaldson and the curriculum, but also with the increase in concerns and issues we're seeing in school. 

There is a view that we've heard from young people that, often, schools and colleges pay lip service to their emotional well-being and the need to bolster their emotional resilience. How would you respond to that—in terms of academic attainment, for example, and whether emotional well-being and resilience is on a par with academic attainment or not in terms of focus and effort within schools and colleges?

09:40

I think that might change in different contexts. So, in the context of a special school, we do have a range of pupils that range from Routes for Learning right the way through to A-levels. So, we see the whole spectrum, from three to 19. For us, we need to place emotional well-being and those sorts of things very high up for our pupils. We're also not under pressure from the system to achieve academically. So, I think there's some tension possibly in the system. That tension is removed for us so we can work with those pupils individually and put a lot of whole-school approaches in. But I think for mainstream—I'm sure my mainstream colleagues would comment that we've got these pupils for maybe five hours a day and we have to think what it is we can do with these pupils in five hours a day, and what the system wants from us and expects from us as well, and what the accountability frameworks look like. I don't know if—

I think, in terms of a clear definition of well-being, that would be welcome. Certainly things have changed quite dramatically. I suppose I've been fortunate enough to have worked in special secondary and in primary. Ten years ago, if you'd said to the average primary teacher 'well-being', they would look at you and say, 'Well, that's simply caring for the child.' Now, things have become far more complicated. We're seeing problems arising, including self-harming, at a far earlier age. I think, for some of my staff, they're frustrated because they can see some of the difficulties that are developing but they're not sure what their responsibility is. And, where we have people who've been trained to deal with children who require perhaps listening, we don't have the staff to offer that support anymore. So, teachers are very much more, 'Where do I prioritise? Are we looking at the academic performance of the child? Are we looking at the mental well-being of the child?' That's quite a difficult situation for them to be in.

And the understanding of the link between mental health and well-being and the ability of the children to learn and make progress, I think, is really well understood now. I think that's probably very well embedded in the majority of schools. I think the issue comes back to Chris's point around the pressures that schools have in terms of the time they have, what their priorities happen to be at that time, and how they can make sure they're still meeting those priorities in terms of learning progress and being able to deliver what's needed for well-being and resilience support in school. There has to be that balance struck. I think, currently, the pressures are actually increasing, I would say, in terms of the resource they've got open to them to be able to deliver on those things. That's a worry to us, because, even just looking in terms of learner progress, we recognise that, if you don't address the well-being issues that the pupil may have, they'll be in no position to make the progress that they could.

Yes, I just—. I'm sorry; I can't see the names, so—. You mentioned self-harm and you said that it has happened at a much earlier age than it used to. Could you just tell us a bit more about that—at what age and when this has happened and what self-harm?

This was a 10-year-old girl who posted online to friends that she was self-harming and it was brought to my attention by the parents of one of the children who picked up that message. That was a difficult one because it's a question I've been asking for some time now: is self-harm a safeguarding issue? Certainly, in the Vale of Glamorgan, we haven't had a clear response to that. The girl in question admitted to self-harming, the parent didn't know about it, and because we had a good relationship with the sets of parents involved in that particular instance, we were able to talk quite openly about it and suggest some of the strategies the parent might adopt. As a result of that, I went on some self-harm training, and what was clear is that the people providing that training were gearing it up to teenage years, and my point was it's happening at a far younger age.

Absolutely, yes.

I think there's been a distinct shift, particularly through social media and the access to social media for young people and their awareness of that kind of thing and the way they communicate. I think that's probably shifted things, and it kind of comes on to areas around training, that actually any training we have for staff and others around this has to be agile enough to react to whatever's happening out there at the time. I think certainly social media 10, 15, 20 years ago wouldn't have necessarily been as big an influence as it is now. 

09:45

I think, also, once we get into those realms of self-harm—and I'd agree with Steve, we see it in much younger pupils, primary age—we're then into the need for specialist services to work with that. Our teachers, in a way, are like GPs. They're general practitioners. We wouldn't expect GPs to do the work of consultants, but I feel that we are expecting teachers, as general practitioners, to do the work of experts. It's very dangerous, once we get untrained people doing their best in those kinds of worlds where, really, we need the provision that's outside schools. I'm sure we'll come to that further down in the agenda.

Just one thing to add to that: I don't think a fortnight goes past where a teacher doesn't come to me and say, 'Somebody has said that they are going to kill themselves.' That's possibly a result of the social media explosion that we've seen, but that's very common. But if a parent hears that their child has said, 'I'm going to kill myself', then, quite naturally, they are worried about it, as are teachers. What you actually do with that statement is difficult. You have to discuss it with the parent. Is it a safeguarding issue? Possibly. It could be. It depends on the context. But we're seeing far more of those comments than we would have done two or three years ago.

Yes, it is. I just wondered whether, today, we medicalise or give a different label to behaviour or things we learn from children compared to perhaps a decade or two ago. Where perhaps someone may now be described as having, say, clinical depression, before they might have been described as being unhappy. In that case, perhaps, were teachers more willing to deal—? Is there a reduced willingness amongst teachers to feel that it's their skill set to deal with these issues than perhaps there was in the past? Do you think that's a valid perspective or not?

I think the issues we're seeing with young people are far more profound than they were—far more profound—and we're seeing it much younger as well. I think the mental health issues we have around children and young people now are quite serious, and far more serious than they were. We see children who are very low—certainly in our sector—in their own self-esteem, very low in their own regard, feel worthless. I think we are seeing all those sorts of things unravelling more severely. As Steve said, I don't know whether it's social media or whatever, but we are certainly seeing pupils who have much more serious mental health problems that require far more provision than a teacher is able to give. If I think back to the start of my career, which is probably about 20-odd years ago, in primary, I don't recall seeing anything like the sorts of things we are seeing now amongst young people.

Teachers are well placed to pick up on things, obviously, because children are spending five or six hours a day in their care. My staff, and I think the staff of most good primary schools, will pick up very early on if there is odd behaviour or worrying behaviour. It's what you do with that knowledge, and that's the difficulty, because there is very little that you can do at the moment. A lot of my staff were trained in the student ASSIST programme—three days of intense training. I had seven members of staff who could deliver that listening programme—I wouldn't call it a counselling programme. It was used extensively through Merthyr and Caerphilly many years ago. It's a very sound programme. But they can't deliver it because we've lost so many staff, and the pressure is to get the academic results. So, staff are in a really difficult situation. They look at a child: 'Well, what's important? His maths or his English, or his or her mental well-being?' I would say mental well-being, but teachers don't often see it like that. And they're not well trained. They're empathetic, they've got some very good understanding of child development, but they're starting to see problems now that they haven't seen hitherto.   

Yes, I was going to ask generally about the senior leadership team in schools and colleges, and the extent to which there's an adequate focus and prioritisation on these emotional well-being and emotional resilience issues, rather than it sometimes being what's described as a tick-box exercise. I just wanted to link that to what you said about only having the children for five hours a day. Because it seems to me that emotional well-being and resilience and academic attainment are inevitably linked. Obviously, if somebody isn't happy with their own state of mind and their own emotional well-being, they're far less likely to be able to learn effectively. There's a big emphasis now, isn't there, in terms of educational attainment—I'm sure it applies to emotional resilience and well-being as well—in working with the parents and the wider community, as well as more directly with the pupils themselves. So, if schools were doing that—working closely with the families and genuinely with the community, as much as they're able to—would that go a long way to addressing both issues, really: the emotional well-being and the academic attainment?

09:50

I think it's critical to recognise that schools have a role to play in it, but I think that we need to realise that it is just a part of the role, and that there are a lot of other things—if you want to make it really effective, joining up with the community approach, if you like, means not just schools addressing this. And the other thing to recognise is that resource at school end is, like in lots of the public sector, so squeezed at the moment, that actually their ability, even if they are willing to do so, is reduced.

In terms of how schools are held to account—in both the old and the new Estyn framework, well-being was an integral part of it, is an integral part of it. So, schools know that they've got to evidence the kind of work they do to support well-being. I think that sometimes, though, if it is a case of showing what you're doing as opposed to really looking at the impact it has on those children and young people, we may be missing a trick. And also the aspirations we see in the wider context of reform—in the Additional Learning Needs and Education Tribunal (Wales) Bill, for example—around joint agency organisational working is aspirationally exactly the right thing to do. We're nowhere near that at the moment, in all honesty. And there's not an unwillingness for that to take place; I just don't think we're in a position where schools are able to know how to go about joining that up for the best impact for their pupils and young people.

I don't think anyone would disagree with you in terms of that link between the emotional well-being of pupils and their ability to learn and progress and develop. I'd absolutely agree with it, but I just think that we need to be honest about the ability of schools to deliver that. And I don't believe there's an unwillingness from school leadership to address it. I just think there needs to be a recognition about what is currently maybe a barrier to that happening and some honest conversations around that.

I think it's quite important that people understand that—you talk about a tick-box mentality, and that's actually probably the very opposite of what happens in schools. Headteachers, senior leaders and ordinary teachers are really, really concerned about this and are going over and beyond maybe what they should be doing in an attempt to put their finger in the dyke that is leaking, and knowing that they can't do enough, but they do what they can. And it's certainly not a tick-box mentality approach to it. It's a genuine concern. We've got to do something. There aren't enough qualified professionals out there coming into schools to give the support that is needed. And what do teachers do? Do they sit on their hands and watch children go through really painful and unpleasant situations? Or do they intervene where they can, knowing they can't do enough?

Okay. If I can move on then, Chair, in terms of well-being and the curriculum, I wonder if you would agree with a statement by the Children's Commissioner for Wales. She's called for, as a matter of urgency, greater alignment between Together for Children and Young People partnerships and reform of the curriculum in Wales. She's frustrated that, in her view, these work streams are not joined up. Is that a view that you would share?

Yes. If we're talking about the partnership working with agencies, and particularly with health, I think that the pressures that health are under mean that the whole provision—and I've been seeing it over seven years, the provision being salami-sliced down, a little bit every year, a little bit every year, until you get to the point where you turn around and realise actually that, if I extend the analogy, most of the salami's missing; there's not much left. But it happens quite insidiously and quite gradually, and I don't think that's intent from anywhere. I mean, there's great intent and there's great aspiration to work together, but actually what we're seeing is a reduction in provision, and that's in a special school. So, in mainstream, it's got to be worse than that. But we are struggling and we're now funding ourselves health provision—therapy provisions—from our own budgets now to support the children in our care.

And, for me, I talk a lot about readiness to learn for pupils and I think that tracks into what you were saying. So, if I've got a pupil who's not comfortable in their own body—their self-regulation, their sensory integration isn't right; if they've got communication issues, so there are frustrations there—then actually if I don't do something about those things, putting them in front of a teacher is almost pointless because they're not ready to learn. So, it's actually crucial, this point, that the whole thing works together. I think the children commissioner is right, but I think there are resource barriers, if I'm really honest. I don't think there's any lack of willingness amongst the professionals to work together.

09:55

Just to say—. Sometimes, if I sit with a parent and they say, 'What do you suggest I do?' and I say, 'Well, perhaps speak to your GP; this is out of my experience and understanding,' sometimes the GP will write back, if I'm lucky, and GPs don't seem to really appreciate the limitations to our system. Very often, a parent will come back and say, 'The GP says you're got a counsellor to go to.' I'm sorry, no, we haven't. Only yesterday, we were informed that the educational psychologist visits that we get—we have six a year—will be reduced down to zero or one. Now, that's really worrying.

I think a lot of the resources that we tap into, as well, quite often come from the third sector, and then the consistency and continuity is an issue there. The constant change in grant funding and whether or not services are going to continue is also an issue for us. You get a relationship, you get support for young people, and then six months or eight months down the line, unfortunately that's no longer available.

Would you say, then, over the last three years, has there been an increase in partnership working, you know, with services recognising a broader role to do with children and young people's emotional well-being and emotional resilience, or not, over the last three years?

I think in terms of something like the Together for Young People programme, the key principles in it are really positive, but it's unclear to me, looking at it, how heavily involved education were in that. Sometimes, the aspirational part in those is disconnected, I think, to what's actually happening on the ground in schools. And in terms of the area of learning and experience you're talking about, I think, in its development, maybe there was an opportunity earlier on to get the partnerships in that involved earlier on, in terms of education joining up with those, because I don't think there's a recognition at, necessarily, a high-level policy level about the reality on the ground. That's where, when devising those sorts of principles, we need to be talking about, actually, what's happening, and recognising the gap that needs to be filled if we want to fulfil those principles. And certainly, looking at the key principles, you wouldn't disagree with any of them, but I think we need to be honest and look at where we are to where we want to get to, and decide how we're going to do that, how we're going to address it, because I think there is a significant disconnect at the moment. 

I would think, and I can only speak for Bridgend, but within Bridgend I would say that partnership working with social services has improved greatly recently, with the formation of local hubs and early help teams. Chris mentioned health. I think that is still an area where we do have limited links and partnership working.

We've kind of gone into the general partnership issues, so I'll bring Darren in now.

I'm very surprised to hear you say that the health service isn't as engaged as it ought to be. I mean, obviously, every health organisation in Wales has to have a mental health strategy, and I would have hoped that they would be speaking to schools, speaking to education service providers, to ask them what their needs were, so that those needs could be met. So, I'm quite alarmed, really, by what you're telling me. And I guess we've got two issues here, haven't we? We've got the support from the health service that's required in order to build resilience, and then we've got the support from the health service when a problem is identified that you want to try to assist with as someone who's in contact on a daily basis with the student or the learner in your school environment.

One thing that struck me during a committee visit that we made up to Abergele, to a CAMHS unit there, was that alongside the CAMHS unit was an education provision for the young people who were in that unit, so that they didn't miss out on their education. It's very clear that there was a high level of expertise amongst the teaching staff. They were primarily teaching staff in that unit, which had been developed because of their long experience working with young people with mental health issues. There was a willingness from those staff members to be a resource—a wider resource—to others. What contact do you have, as people on the front line, and do your members have with CAMHS education units, in terms of the expertise that they have and the knowledge that they have being a supporting role to you? And do you think, if that's not been available to you to date, that it ought to be?

10:00

Very limited contact. If we have a pupil who is, for example, in Tŷ Llidiard in Bridgend, we'll have a link there. But apart from that, there isn't a two-way dialogue going on at all at any point.

So, the interface with you is simply to find out where that child is at in terms of their education—

Yes, and for us to provide work and vice versa—

It's not sharing expertise.

—pre-emptive advice, if you like, in order to prevent an admission or—.

No. We used to have the facility to bring in a primary mental health nurse. We could make contact there and she could come into school and do work with us, but that was very much the therapeutic side—it wasn't the educational side. That service has now been withdrawn, so we have, I think it's two hours on a Tuesday morning, where we are able to make phone contact to gain advice, and that's the extent of it.

So, you can't pick up the phone at any other time—

—and say, 'I've just had a child who I've discovered is self harming'— 

The threshold now is so high—

—before you're able to actually kick in and have that kind of access. So, it is very reactive and it's not very proactive at the further down end. One of the issues we also find, certainly for the primary sector, is that it's difficult to—I think you were saying this earlier—unless they're a risk to themselves or others, and you've got to really evidence that, you can't access it.

I think what I'm surprised by, though, is that, clearly, those units are run by the local education authorities. They're not run by the health board. So, it ought to be easy to have a dialogue with those members of teaching staff who are in those units, because they are employed by the local education authorities.

I've been completely unaware. I don't recognise what you're talking about, and I'm the head of one of the biggest special schools in Wales. I've no idea what—

No. Our contact with CAMHS is a monthly clinic with a psychiatrist, who will see a few children, two or three, probably at the highest levels of need. The thresholds, as Rob said, are now so high, the interventions are so short and the waiting times are so long that I think the system's in a state, from our point of view, of learned helplessness. I think CAMHS is almost 'perhaps and maybe', so you try and do what you can otherwise. I think there is a crucial issue around provision of CAMHS. I think they've now had to raise their thresholds to meet the level of provision that they have, and it's not enough.

They've been telling us—. The national lead, if you like, for improving CAMHS services has told us that there's going to be an in-reach sort of service that is being developed to support schools in delivering some front-line support. Are you familiar with that phrase?

Well, the first I heard about it was in September when it was announced.

The first I heard about it was in your paper that we received about the lines of questioning. That's the first we've heard.

[Inaudible.]—that's the first I've heard about it as a policy maker and as a representative of school leaders. I—

So, there's been no engagement about that in-reach service—

Not that I'm aware of.

You've heard nothing since the announcement in September. It's having no impact on the front line.

Just to give you an idea of context, I was with a headteacher earlier this week who has a child with particular mental health problems. She was told that, and had to put in place, excluding that child as the only way to get a CAMHS referral.

And that's how she was advised to take things forward in order to get the support that that child needed?

And you would advise parents, if you've got children who are threatening self-harm or having suicidal thoughts—the advice is, 'Go to A&E'.

Jane, can I just ask—? You said you've only got this two-hour support available. So, is that what your advice would be outside this time—outside that slot—to go to A&E?

If it was something of that extreme nature, yes. I mean, your first advice to a parent is that you take them to the GP. You're reliant on the parent doing that in the first place. Then the GP—. I think someone mentioned that there's been a misunderstanding about what schools can offer. Quite often, the GP would bat it back and say, 'The school can refer to CAMHS.' Well, we can't. So, you've got a bit of a ping-pong situation sometimes. But, in extreme cases, yes, A&E.

Now, you've all got a mental health lead that you can access, though, have you? Do all individual schools have a mental health lead? We're told that this is the case.

I'm not aware of one.

You're not aware of one. Okay. Well that's another concern.

By default, maybe, people would think maybe it's the additional learning needs co-ordinator or the special educational needs co-ordinator who would be leading on it, but as far—

I'm talking about a health professional who you can access.

Okay. Just to give us an idea of the scale of this, now, you've already talked about the increase in pressures and the increase in the prevalence of mental health issues. In terms of actual referrals being made by schools directly into CAMHS—

10:05

No. It's go to the GP.

We might do it through one of our health team at the school. We have nurses on site with us because of the nature of the children, and we have therapists, as I said before, and some provision from the trust. So, we tend to use our therapists to try and speak the speak, if you like, and find the access ways through. But I'd be unaware of a health lead whom I could go to as my gateway into health services.

I mean, you’re trusted professionals, aren’t you? We know that they’ve got long waiting times for CAMHS therapy, and you’ve cited that in your evidence as being a problem, because you’re having to cope with a young person who might be in an increasing crisis situation during that waiting period. Is there any interim support that is given by the health board to assist you with that?

There used to be.

As I said before, we used to have a primary mental health team nurse who would come into school. I could contact her directly, we’d discuss the issue, and she’d make an assessment over the phone on whether or not she needed to come in. She would come in, she’d meet with the child, the parent and a member of our team and do a three, four or six-week programme of intervention, an hour a week. Then, her judgment would be whether or not it was enough for us to carry on in school or to further it to more specialist support, but that service was withdrawn.

What about the role of school nurses generally? Do you have them? Do you have access to them?

Can I just ask one final question on this CAMHS situation? Do any of your schools—? I mean, obviously, some of your members will have experience of looked-after children with mental health problems. Where a child is placed outside of the county, who were the care provider and had the responsibility of that looked-after child, have you experienced any problems with accessing local CAMHS services? The reason I ask is, I’ve come across a case of a young person in Pembrokeshire who was placed by, I think, Neath Port Talbot council—I might be wrong there in terms of the placing council—but this young person was placed, not by Pembrokeshire social services, in foster care. That child developed some mental health problems, presented with those, obviously, in school and with a GP, and one of the issues for that child was they were told that they had to be referred back to their sending local authority for CAMHS services and support; they couldn’t receive it locally in Pembrokeshire. You’re familiar with that.

Yes, that's true of all health services. So, I take pupils from seven authorities across south Wales—

Even though that individual is living in that local authority area and within the—

Yes. So, both living and educated. So, exactly that that you described. I also have pupils from seven local authorities who come to us, as our provision, and we operate across three health boards. You will not get a health board providing therapy services into my school because it’s in the Vale and Cardiff if they’re from Newport. So, either we provide it, which is what we’ve ended up doing from our own budgets, or you, perhaps, have to take the children back to Newport for it.

So, what you’ve described is true.

Okay. We’re going to move on, now, to talk about a whole-school approach, because one of the key drivers with the inquiry is also to look at how we intervene early and develop that universal resilience. Michelle.

Thank you, Chair. Coming back to what you mentioned earlier, it’s extremely concerning that the levels of stress of primary school children are on the rise and self-harming is happening with primary school children. Do you think that there is actually more stress on those children? And, where do you think these problems are coming from? Sorry if it’s a really difficult question.

No. I think young people these day come under a range of pressures, don’t they? They’re more aware of the world around them, so socially and through social media, there are these aspirations and expectations placed upon them. I think that, in schools, we place pressures upon them to perform from a very early age, because our schools are judged on the performance of those pupils. I think all of that starts to tell. I think that we are seeing more difficulties, possibly, in society as well, and I think all of those combined, actually, put enormous pressure on younger and younger children. I can remember when I was in primary, it wasn’t that long ago, but the pressures on year 6s to do well in their SAT tests, because—. And they knew it. I think the thing for children is they don't want to let their teachers or their school down either, or their parents. By and large, they're all good kids. Would you recognise that in mainstream?

10:10

Yes, I think so. There's no doubt about social media. I listened to something recently on Radio 4 where somebody was saying, years ago—. We're always putting on an act in whatever role we have, children the same as adults, but when they got home they could switch off. Now, children don't switch off. They've got a device with them virtually all of the time. They're always on show, and we're starting to see that. Problems with social media and bullying through texting are becoming a real issue—a real issue—and that concerns me.

But, as Chris has said, children are under more pressure. I've got two older boys, getting towards 30, but I've got a daughter who is now 15. She's incredibly worried about performance at GCSE level. She's taking a GCSE in January at 15. She sees a counsellor, because a lot of her friends do, and there is a lot of peer pressure. It's almost—in some ways, the thing to do is to be able to talk about mental health issues, but when I talk to her and her friends, they're talking about a lot of them actually being on medication at 15, and it's almost as if it's the norm, and that's incredibly worrying.

I also think the measures for schools and, therefore, the curriculum that is delivered, are also impacting, because more and more schools are restricting the range of subjects that they're offering, and so every child is having to do English and maths, the three sciences, and then the scope for them to do the things that they actually enjoy is being restricted as well.

We are seeing that, aren't we? We're seeing a restriction in the curriculum, particularly in terms of arts and that side of things, which I think are good for us and good for young people, as well—there's a route for expression and things. I listened to a young man who said that he'd been very angry, and, actually, he'd found, through dance, he was able to just push all that out, and I think we're losing that from our schools very quickly.

What would a whole-school approach to emotional resilience look like?

A lot of schools are doing work on growth mindsets and positive attitudes, but it is very much, I feel, on a school-by-school basis. If a school is proactive in putting something forward, great, but then it's not necessarily consistent, and, if a child moves from one school to another, they could have a totally different experience.

To some extent, as well, we work perhaps at the more severe end of need, so for us, that's set; we would have everything from safe adults meeting children straight off buses—as soon as they come in, they don't go to class, they either work with an adult or they go to a safe space, or they may have nurture groups that they come to. We have mindfulness sessions for pupils, we have yoga sessions for pupils, we have a play therapist, music therapists and a whole range of therapies going on around them, and we have an alternate curriculum that promotes just their self-esteem and confidence, and we'll work with them in any way we can, whatever it is the young person feels successful at. That could be anything from photography, creative arts, to maybe just using some Nintendo DSs just to settle them in, with an adult, and just getting back into that readiness to learn and back to the classroom.

To some extent, I have the luxury to do that, and because of the severity, sometimes, of the challenging behaviours that arise I need to do that, but I think, probably for mainstream schools, it's: have they got the space to do that, to work with those young people? The stuff around adverse childhood experiences, and how we should work with those young people, means they need all that at the start of the day. For me, if I think back to mainstream and, perhaps, in a secondary, if we didn't do some of that work for the first hour, hour and a half, when those young people came in with all that baggage, actually, they were likely to disrupt education for maybe 100 children during the day as they went through classes. So, we need to create the space and we need to put less pressure, I think, in terms of the accountability frameworks and actually recognise schools for that work they're going to do with those young people who, let's be honest, may not or may get the gold standards of the five A* to C and those sorts of things, but we need to work out what matters for pupils and what their journey travelled is like, and that's not what we celebrate.

I think that the piece about accountability is absolutely fundamental, with a link to the way in which it has influenced schools' ability to offer what they need to. Also, I've got a son who's 20 and a daughter who's an adopted daughter who's 11. The difference in terms of their success—they will almost inevitably not do the same things. My son is particularly academic, but the idea that my daughter should be judged as being any less successful because she doesn't take an academic route worries me, because I think the way in which schools are held to account seems to be—. And don't get me wrong; literacy, numeracy and those sorts of things are fundamentally important, and I recognise those things. But if we make those the only measure of success, that pitches a field in a school that immediately, you could argue, will disenfrachise a certain section of those pupils. And I think there's a risk in that. I think you've got to think a little bit more about what we see as success and how we measure in a way that doesn't minimalise it, doesn't do it over such a short term that, for certain pupils, it can affect their sense of well-being.

10:15

We've got a lot of areas to cover, so I am going to make a very firm appeal to Members for brief questions, please—and if we can have answers that are as concise as possible. Darren on personal, social and health education, please. 

Yes, I just wondered what your feelings were about the existing PSHE curriculum and whether you think that that's sufficient to cope with some of these emerging issues with mental health. I know that some of you have pitched in the past for a revised PSHE curriculum, but obviously we've got the Donaldson curriculum as well now, which is being developed alongside. I just want your thoughts on the curriculum, as it were, and particularly whether PSHE is sufficient at the moment. 

I think, for my staff, it's still fundamental that literacy and numeracy are taught. Now, obviously you can teach personal and social skills through both of those subject areas, but for them it seems, in spite of what I can tell them, they know that they're going to be able to be judged on those results. So, PSE has always been, in my experience, a bit of a cinderella add-on. It's now become a little bit more integral, but, again, there's still this fear, I suppose, of what the expectation is of the teacher. We can call upon other organisations to come in and help us. The police, for example, have been fantastic supporting us, but their service has been cut, so we're seeing less and less support from that area. Programmes that we've implemented, like the student assistance programme—we don't have the capacity to deliver it anymore. In my particular school, and the same in many other schools in the Vale of Glamorgan, there is now no additional support for teachers in key stage 2— nothing—because we've lost that support. Very often, you'd have learning support assistants who could complement and bring something to the curriculum that perhaps the teacher couldn't do, and that's now dissolved completely.

PSE was very much an add-on; it was something that the form teacher would deliver once a fortnight. It wasn't their subject area; it was something they had to do. We've moved away from that and we're now having two health and well-being lessons a fortnight, which are developed by the teacher. So, I'm quite positive about that move, but that's just one school. There's no general consensus as to what PSE should really look like and who should be delivering it. 

Obviously, the scope of PSE is much wider than just mental health, isn't it? But, from a mental health perspective, you mentioned, Chris, earlier on the fact that you've got elements of mindfulness, et cetera, in school, which are relatively easy to tag on to any lesson—at the start of the lesson, if there's something stressful coming up, or whatever it might be. Is that a better approach, I suppose, is one of the things I would ask.

I think we acknowledge it is, and our staff are going to be trained in mindfulness, and we're going to—. We've already got a member of staff who's now a mental health first-aider. We're looking to do that with a number of staff, but, again, that's just one school, and I don't know what the school down the road is doing.

So, spreading this throughout the school day, rather than a chunk once a fortnight, might be a better approach to dealing with that.

There are some examples of very, very good practice in some schools, and there are examples of other schools who adopt a minimalist approach, and perhaps we do need some sort of standard.

Mindfulness was introduced in my school last year, and it was well-received by—I'd say 60 per cent, 40 per cent, in favour, among the children. This was year 5 and 6. It was good. I thought it was really positive, but we couldn't afford to keep it going, and that's gone, I'm afraid. The children say to me, 'Can we have more mindfulness?' Yes, I'd like to, but—.

And there's potential within the new area of learning and experience, I think, to have it more widespread across the practice within the school than maybe PSHE ever was. It was always, in my experience as a head, an extra. You recognised the importance of it, but, again, it was how you deliver it and where you deliver it in terms of time and space in the curriculum. 

10:20

And in terms of—. You know, you've said that there are various examples of good practice—which I'm aware of in my patch as well. You think it might be useful, then, if the Welsh Government maybe set a gold standard for schools to adopt in Wales. Yes. Okay, thank you. 

Chair, have we got time just to ask: what is the cost of mindfulness? What costs are involved in providing it? 

The eight-week programme that we run, I think it costs us about £500. 

So, obviously the Estyn inspectors come round on a reasonably regular basis to every one of your schools, and what they say matters because you all want to be achieving excellence as far as the inspection reports are concerned. To what extent are they looking sufficiently at mental health and well-being? 

Well-being features quite strongly in the current framework. I suppose the caveat to that is that we're not very good at measuring things we value in education generally, and particularly we're not very good at measuring a qualitative measure rather than quantitative. So, it comes back to, I think, a couple of things: (1) what are your measures and what's your clear understanding of what 'good' looks like or 'excellent' looks like, particularly in this area, and also how much of that are schools able to influence, given that we heard this morning that we are seeing more and more children towards the severe end of issues, and that is increasing, and that's beholden on other services that schools have no control over. So, I think that's the only caveat that I'd add, but I do think it's important that it is included. 

Okay, so you could get a poor rating on this because of the lack of support from elsewhere—

Precisely, and that's what we need to—

So, what do you think the Estyn inspection regime needs to focus on as far as mental health and well-being is concerned? 

I think the focus on pupil voice is welcome. We're paying far more attention now to what children actually think and what they're prepared to tell us, but very often they'll tell us things that we can't really address on occasion. So, that's quite a—. The quantitative measures that we have had, the PASS survey that was used extensively, and is used extensively, so I understand, throughout England, was very useful, and again that was used, certainly when I was in Caerphilly, in every school so every school had the same measure of where children were in terms of well-being.  

Pupil Attitudes to Self and School. 

There's the national review of behaviour and attendance as well; we use an adapted NBAR. There are Leuven scales as well, which measure well-being. So, there are a number of measures in place that are used. 

Is it consistent, though, in terms of those measures? 

No, they measure different things.

And one of the things to recognise in that as well is there's a difference between—. Having an idea that everyone's well-being will be fantastic in your school as your measure is ridiculous, really, because you know that children come in at different places, so it's about some way of evidencing from a school point of view that they recognise and have mechanisms in place to pick up when there are issues, and measuring in a way things that they can have influence over. As we've already mentioned, there are some things that may not happen but that's nothing to do with the school, to some extent—it's to do with the resource and other things. So, NBAR, for example, would highlight those at-risk pupils and specific issues that might be coming up for them, and then schools were able to then try and put in place things to support those individual pupils and the specific needs they had. That, for me, would be good qualitative evidence that the schools were looking at addressing it.  

So, I would be right in saying you want more focus on these things in the inspection regime but you want it to be fair, given the cohort of pupils and learners coming in, and given the lack of engagement from some partners. Yes? Okay. 

Yes, and also these surveys cost you, and they've been dropped by authorities because they can't afford them. So, we come back to money again. 

Okay. Okay, these PASS surveys and the other ones that you referred to. Okay, thank you. 

On money, relating to that and some of these areas of good practice within some schools around Place2Be—and there's a mindfulness programme that Steve's just told us that you were trying, at least for years 5 and 6, but had to drop because of financial pressures. I'd just like to understand a bit about whether this is to any extent specific to Evenlode. I think I saw that you were forty-eighth out of forty-eighth in the Vale of Glamorgan for funding per pupil, significantly below £3,000 per head, and I think—I don't know whether this is somewhere particular; I think I saw something in the media from your governors about quite significant cuts that they felt you needed to make this summer. I just wonder: is what you're telling us about Evenlode Primary School, or is it something that we can generalise to schools generally, given how much less money you appear to get than the average? Are the needs less at your school because of the intake? Does that mean that emotional well-being is less of a requirement for your school than it is for some others, or not?

10:25

I think one of the difficulties is that we occupy a socially advantaged area, so there's also an assumption by many people that, 'Ah, there's no difficulty there.' And when I first arrived at the school—safeguarding: I talked to the staff and they looked at me blankly, and said, 'Oh, we haven't got problems here.' I said, 'Oh, we will, we do', and it's interesting because when we have things like the pupil attitudes to self and school survey, you can identify children who you thought were absolutely fine, but had underlying issues that we hadn't picked up on.

As far as schools within my cluster are concerned, it's the same picture, and I can give you a concrete example of that. 

In your cluster, are they similar proportions of free school meals?

Yes. And as the National Association of Head Teachers representative for the Vale of Glamorgan, it's a similar picture that's coming through from the schools throughout the Vale. 

I don't know whether this is for Steve, or someone else, but would we expect to see greater incidence of mental health issues that are requiring more expensive interventions in schools that perhaps have a less well-off intake than we see in England?

No, I would disagree. I think Porthcawl would be seen to be an affluent school, but then the pressures for academic performance on our pupils is great, and therefore we do have a significant number of self-harm, eating disorders, with them striving for perfection, if you like. 

I think the basic message is that the pressures may be different, but they're no less extensive in any particular school. I think maybe the ability for schools in disadvantaged areas to sometimes continue the programmes that have been talked about will be assisted with PDG and those sorts of grants. But they're under pressure because they've got to cover a lot of things as well. So, I think, in terms of the scale of issues in different schools, I don't believe that's different between the different socioeconomic areas particularly, it's just that their specific needs might be different. 

But how on earth then can we have—whether it's a gold standard or otherwise—national standards as to what's required in this area, when some schools have at least some money they can put towards it, whereas others do not?

It comes down to priorities, doesn't it?

That obviously applies to the whole education system. In some ways, we've got a national standard for our expectation of our pupils to achieve, so whatever we do in schools, we've got national standards, which rightly we should have. But because—and this isn't the remit of this committee—the funding levels are so different in different areas, I think that that's almost an unanswerable question in some ways, Mark. 'I don't know' is the honest answer. Rob, would you—?

We've done quite a bit of work on funding across Wales at the moment with schools, and what we're seeing is that you have, just briefly, 22 local authorities and 22 different funding formulas. You have things that are included in certain formulas that are not in others. So, actually, this kind of perception at the moment about comparators on, certainly the gross per pupil spend, is probably not very helpful, if I'm honest, because they include things in one area that they don't in others. 

Looking at the curriculum throughout the pioneer schools in particular—[Inaudible.]—would be in the curriculum, perhaps with a teacher doing that to the whole class, and might perhaps not have the same financial trade-offs as some of the other issues we've discussed. I don't know who's best to speak to this, but what are the pioneer schools doing in terms of developing that curriculum in this area? How is that going and what sort of approach would we want to see given the emerging lessons from those pioneer schools? 

Specifically on health and well-being?

I sit on the National Digital Learning Council and we were asked to go and attend as observers and maybe support the areas of learning and experience and mine was health and well-being. I attended in October, and at that point they didn't have a definition of health and well-being. 

And we've introduced health and well-being into our year 7 now, but we don't know if what we're introducing is what eventually is going to be what is expected of us. 

No, we're not a pioneer school. 

I'll come back to the point that we were talking about—the AoLE work in terms of this area specifically, and about getting into those partnership conversations, the outside of education partnership conversations, much, much earlier. 

They're not, for instance, taking any evidence from therapists, which you're expecting them to take. So, from occupational therapists to speech and language therapists, I'd expect that group to have really looked at that, because those issues are in mainstream as well as in special schools, and that wasn't even on their agenda. From what I saw, and I can only speak to that, and I understand they've had three days of meetings since, I thought it was, at best, poor. 

Okay, thank you. I've got Hefin next on teacher training and continuous professional development.

10:30

To what extent is mental health training provided for teachers in initial teacher training?

I don't think it is. My son's just finished teacher training and I asked him that very question and the response was: 'Yes, they might be stressed—just have a quiet word with them.' That was his training.

There's a fundamental absence in the initial teacher-training process.

In the overall programme, certainly.

As far as I'm aware, the older, previous information technology programmes had little or none. Given the move towards the areas of learning and experience, for example, I know, certainly, that certain—. The University of Wales Trinity Saint David, I know, are looking at it in terms of the roll-out of what they're doing in terms of the new courses they offer. But for our position—our position is quite clear: we think it is an integral piece of training for students and right the way through teachers' careers.

The issue at the moment, again, is, if you're looking at a PGCE, it's about that limited amount of time that they have access to that training and where you put it so that is not just a tokenistic element of training. For me, and we've made it quite clear here—the fundamental link between mental health and well-being resilience and the ability of the child to achieve. We've established that through John's question, particularly. I think that, unless we get that as an integral part—and a significant integral part of initial teacher training—we're missing a key trick.

So, with that in mind, would it be known that these gaps currently exist, but can be filled in the future with future generations of teachers? Is it therefore incumbent on schools to ensure that it's part of continued professional development? Is there time and scope to provide that within the school week? And I would put that to the headteachers.

'No' is the short answer. I know that the University of South Wales in Newport, several years ago, were using the student assist programme as part of their training for teachers. I put myself through some counselling training a couple of years ago because I was increasingly finding myself sat with parents and thinking, 'I'm way out of my depth here', and I completed that training and thought, 'Do you know what? I really wish I'd had that training as a teacher.' That would have helped enormously.

I think there are opportunities and I think the ITT institutions have started to engage with it, particularly as they're now bidding for new contracts, they're looking differently at it. But up to this point, you couldn't undertake a training placement in a special school as part of your initial teacher training. That's not permitted. Actually, you might think that's probably one of the best places where you could learn about a whole range of interventions that work—those sorts of things. So, I think that will change in the future, but up until this point, that hasn't been the case.

And also, if you think about the process of continued professional development, it doesn't necessarily have to be—. Well, maybe one training intervention is needed, but what about reflective practice embedded in the teaching day as something that the teacher would do? Is that something that might be helpful? Do you do that in the schools?

It would be incredibly helpful. When you do it, certainly in the primary sector where you're in the classroom constantly, your ability to have that time to reflect, to refine and have that—. My degree included an approach around reflective pedagogy—that's what we did. So, it's interesting seeing what's being talked about now in the current plans. It's encouraging to me. But my question would be about the resource. When I talk about resource, I'm not just talking about money here—I'm talking about space and time, because one of the things we're constantly saying is: when new things are being brought into the curriculum—and obviously it's a huge piece of exciting work, potentially—what stops to allow us to make best use of that?

I just don't know where the time would come from for that—

—when you've got teachers giving up their lunchtime and after school for the academic element of it. Where would they have the time for that?

Just to say, in my own setting, one of things that I insist on is that every meeting starts with a discussion about children. So, you have professionals twice a week sitting and talking about individuals. Their concerns are brought back to us and we feed back to the staff. So, there is some CPD going on there because people get that opportunity to share that knowledge and concern. But I agree with you: where you'd find the time to fit it in, I'm not sure.

Thank you. Llyr, you've got some more questions on funding.

Yes, I just wanted to develop on that a little bit because the NAHT paper says that there can be no expectation on any school to provide health and social care services funding from the school budget. I know why you're saying that—the message is perfectly clear. But doesn't that go against the whole-school approach, and have we not established—and I think you reiterated earlier on—that fragile emotional resilience is a significant barrier to learning? So, should we not see it more as an integrated part of what schools actually do, and therefore use their own budgets on that?

10:35

Absolutely, but I think it comes back to the ability of the schools to deliver on that. And one of the other things we are seeing now, and we did cite it also in the paper, was about being able to invest in the mental health, well-being and resilience of their staff, because, actually, unless staff are able to be in front of children and give good positive role models around that, then we're failing the children on that basis too. I think there is a limited resource that sits with schools. At the moment, the idea—. The piece we're trying to make about that work is that, if it's some kind of health provision that should be given to support that, that cannot fall back to schools to do because we simply don't have the resources, or you have ring-fenced funding that comes into the school to do it. You can't do it on the basis of a school budget finding that. So, that was the point around that area.

Okay, that's perfectly clear, and that's fair enough as well. But we did see, through the survey as well, that some schools fund family liaison workers from their budgets, presumably because there is nothing else and they have to do that. But some, as well, told us that they fund, for example, emotional literacy support assistants from their pupil development grant, the PDG. Now, I'm just wondering whether you think that's appropriate use of the PDG in terms of what it's supposed to achieve. Also, are you aware of, or would you admit to using, pots of funding that were actually supposed to be used for particular areas but are actually being used to cover bases where budgets aren't sufficient?

I think that's probably true.

From the terms of PDG, we do fund some ELSA learning coaches and we do fund a family liaison officer, which is very powerful and it means that we reach the hard-to-reach families and get them into school. It's even more difficult for us because our pupils aren't local; many of them live a long way away and will come on transport. So, we do that.

But I do hear of colleagues who are using EIG and PDG, really just to maintain reasonable staffing levels and class sizes in schools. I think Rob would have more to say across the piece on that.

We've done some work around this and that's what our school leaders are telling us. And if you read the information that talks about how that grant can be used, they don't break that, necessarily; it's creative, shall we say, in some ways. But the reality is that those schools who maybe are not facing a huge issue in terms of a deficit of budget are only doing so often if they've got a high level of PDG that supports that. What they're saying around EIG particularly, which would come into Hefin's question about the professional development, is that we were given flexibility in the EIG in 2015, I think, or it may be even earlier, because there was a recognition that the individual grants that sit within it were reducing, and so more flexibility was given to schools to target how they were going to use it. The reality is that many schools are now saying they're doing it exactly as Chris describes to sustain their staffing, because the best resource you've got for supporting children in this area is your staff. But that means there's nothing then left to do the CPD and those other areas. So, I think that maybe the grants and things are being used and they're hiding a fundamental issue around the basic school funding, and that's maybe a concern.

I think also the fact that it is grant funding does influence the calibre of person that you perhaps will take on, because they see it as a temporary contract. Also, then, you've got professional consistency of staff with the children and building those relationships.

Thanks very much. Yes, I wanted to ask you about the role of educational psychologists. It has been mentioned already, and I believe it was—well, I can't remember exactly in what context you mentioned it. But is there a shortage generally throughout Wales, and are you able to access educational psychologists when you need to?

Well, not when you need to. We have six visits a year and, for nearly 1,400 children, those six visits a year are just the tip of the iceberg.

I think, as well, we should be clear about roles and expectations, to some extent. While we're talking here about some fairly serious mental health issues and emotional issues that sit around our children and young people, what we actually need is clinical psychology and psychiatric support for them, rather than educational psychologists who, to some great extent, should actually be looking more around learning deficits and those sorts of things, rather than those real psychiatric issues that we're now having to deal with. So, not only, I guess, are we seeing educational psychology services reducing, but the availability of clinical psychology and psychiatric services is another key issue, not just for us in special but, I think, across the piece.

10:40

We're seeing local authorities under pressure in terms of their resource, and so they're looking at different ways of utilising the EP services and the numbers they have, hence why you're hearing the examples of reductions of visits and that sort of thing. Chris's point is a key one; we need to understand what an EP actually does and their role in this. Certainly there have been examples in the past of local authorities, in a sensible way, trying to be more strategic in how they are being used and maybe trying to see them covering other areas—one would be picking up on autism and those ASD areas. But the issue is about their ability then to go through the diagnosis part of that, and that can then cause an issue for that individual child.

The issue around mental health and well-being is: is that the right role for an educational psychologist? That's the question, I guess. But, access to the educational psychologist is difficult—you have such a minimal amount of time. When I was a head, my school was fairly small, and there would be certain years when I needed far more than the two or three visits I was going to get a year. In other years, I maybe didn't. We've already talked about the scale of the issue as it stands, so I'm not sure it really is—. I'm interested to see whether that's a solution in this context, in terms of mental health and well-being.

Parents will say, 'Can you refer them to the educational psychologist?', and I have to explain that that's not really what their role is. My advice then is, 'Please go back to your GP and ask for a clinical psychologist to be involved', and of course they'll go to the GP and the GP will very often come back and say, 'No, it's the school counselling service.' Well, we haven't got a counselling service. So, the short answer is there's not enough EP support, but there needs to be additional support as well as the EP.

And it is diminishing, the EP support. Is that what you're saying? Quite clearly, it's going down. 

Right. Then, I wanted to ask you about school nurses. We've had a lot of support for the idea that school nurses are able to help with children's emotional well-being. So, is there a decline in the number of school nurses, and how do you see their role?

I'd like to see one—[Inaudible.] I have nurses, but the nurses I have are actually for children who are severely ill.

Equally, they would want to have no role in any of the aspects you've just described. In mainstream—is it dwindling?

We do have a school nurse—

She will deliver certain elements of the curriculum to certain year groups, so will do, say, three or four sessions on puberty. She's available on a Friday lunchtime for a drop-in, but it isn't well used. But, in terms of mental health, no input.

Right. So, a drop-in that is not well used. She is there for the pupils to go and see her if they want to, but they don't take it up.

It's well advertised, but it's not a service that they really avail themselves of.

Right. And do the teachers ever ask the school nurse to get involved with—

Yes, they do, but that would tend to be for hygiene issues, more of a physical intervention, rather than to do with mental health.

I think some of it is to do with the title. If you say to a child, 'You've got to go and see the nurse', they're going to go, 'Ooh', whereas going to see a counsellor has a different cachet about it and the child may be more willing to do that.

I also think that if you've got somebody who drops in once a week, you're not going to get a relationship being built where a child will disclose something of this nature.

I think, from a primary sector—

I've not been a head now for over two years, but even I recall, at that time, that you would see the school nurse for the health measures they do for your youngest pupils, or if there had been a specific instance that they needed to come and talk to you about—a child had arrived in hospital with an injury, or something that you'd need to flag up. Other than that, we had very, very little input with school nurses at all. Because they were being spread so thinly and they were covering so many different schools, it was almost on an emergency basis, I guess—that was the only time you'd really pursue that.

I want to bring Michelle in now on school counselling, but briefly, Michelle, please. One overarching question.

10:45

I'll be as quick as I can. Do you think that the duty to provide reasonable counselling services should be extended to primary schools?

And Action for Children believe that a school-based counselling services—the funding for it should be ring-fenced. Would you agree with that?

And has it been your experience that access to counselling is reducing? Because obviously there was a legal duty given to secondary schools for counselling a few years ago. What is your experience? Is it getting better or worse?

[Inaudible.]—for our secondary-aged pupils through Action for Children, so it's third sector. We have a good counsellor who comes once a week for a day. We actually have a day a week, which I think is great, really good, and has a great impact.

Can I just ask a follow-up question? One of the things that was in the survey was—. There were a couple of responses about access to school counselling services and them only being available during lesson time. So, if kids are feeling under pressure because they're falling behind with work, they're going to fall even further behind with work in order to go to see the school counsellor. How do you think that issues like that can be addressed?

More in the community and allowing children to go out. We do allow children to go out and access services.

But they'd still be missing lessons and falling behind.

They're still missing lessons and you've got the transport issue then as well. But also in school, you're asking them to go and open their souls, their hearts, and then five minutes later they're going to French.

And also in front of everyone—the perception of going and being seen to be going. If you've got an issue, then that's a problem.

I know that you said, Tim, earlier on—I think it was you—that people are more prepared to go to the school counsellor, and some perhaps see it as a badge of honour that they're having counselling. But for others there's a stigma attached to it, isn't there?

There are ways round it. Some schools will employ a counsellor who stays after school. Now, that's fine if you happen to live close to the school. If you have to get on a bus, you can't use it. But people are trying to be very creative about giving the opportunity to children.

Is there something about calling someone a school counsellor or a school nurse? Perhaps the badge, the label that's attached to them, is an inappropriate label. Should we be talking about the health and well-being officer or the—? I don't know; just to overcome some of these issues.

I'd probably suggest that you talk to the pupils about that. Because I think if stigma's an issue for them, they probably would be able to come up with ideas of things that they would maybe be more comfortable with.

That's why programmes like the student assistance programme were very good, because it was a listening programme. And when you're trying to explain that provision to parents, because you need their permission for the child to participate, their immediate response is, 'Oh, it's a counselling programme'. No, it's a simple listening programme. It's an effective programme.

Just to go back to counselling, when I was doing some training in counselling, I looked at the provision throughout the Vale of Glamorgan's secondary schools for the programme they were delivering, and there was a very positive response. But what was interesting was that not that many boys were accessing counselling, excepting the boys' school in Barry. A lot of boys were accessing it. So, that's something I think that we need to bear in mind, particularly when you look at male suicide rates. So, I know, certainly in my daughter's school, there are more girls accessing the counselling than there are boys, because there really is a stigma for a boy to open his soul, if that's how you want to describe it.

In Scotland, they've developed guidance teachers. Do you think that would be something that we should be looking at here as a sort of special category of teacher whose role is to provide that kind of emotional support?

Attached to each school?

That would be lovely.

In secondary schools, we quite often call those the heads of year.

I think, again, that varies from school to school. We have student support staff. They're not teachers but that is their role in school, and that's an invaluable service, but that is funded primarily by the school. And again, it's that consistency from one setting to another.

Okay. I'm afraid we have run out of time, because we've had quite a lengthy session. Sorry, Llyr. So, can I just thank you all for attending and providing us with all the answers that we've received from you today? It's been very useful. You will be sent a transcript of the session to check for accuracy in due course, but thank you again for your attendance today.

10:50
4. Ymchwiliad i Iechyd Emosiynol a Meddyliol Plant a Phobl Ifanc - Sesiwn dystiolaeth 4
4. Inquiry into the Emotional and Mental Health of Children and Young People - Evidence session 4

We will move on, then, to our fourth evidence session, which is from the Association of Directors of Education in Wales. I'm very pleased to welcome Nichola Jones, head of inclusion and disabilities at Pembrokeshire County Council, Kathryn Morgan, senior educational psychologist at Bridgend county council, Pippa Raggett, who is assistant head at Ysgol Dewi Sant and who is in charge of well-being there, and Will McLean, who is the chief officer for children and young people at Monmouthshire County Council. Welcome and thank you all for attending. If you're happy, we'll go straight into questions from Members. I've got John Griffiths first.

Thank you, Chair. I'd be interested in your view as to what extent is it now widely accepted by schools and colleges in Wales that they have a role to promote and ensure emotional well-being and resilience amongst their pupils and young people.

From our perspective, I think it's absolutely. Schools clearly recognise that. I think they see it as a fundamental part of their role—I think they have for a long time—in terms of what we would potentially, traditionally have referred to as their pastoral role in supporting children. I think the other thing that has become hugely apparent is that, in our quest to see higher levels of attainment amongst our children, and better standards across the country, well-being is a fundamental part to that. So, unless your children are attending school well, ready to learn and in a good place, then they will never achieve what we hope they will achieve. No matter how excellent the teaching and learning you put in front of them and wrap around them, they have to have the very best well-being to enable them to make the most benefit of that. So, I think, absolutely, schools recognise that as being a fundamental part of their role.

I think, to back that, there has been a huge weighting in the ADEW sub-group. So, inclusion heads and school improvement heads meet on a termly basis and in terms of the agenda that's discussed there, it is on every agenda. So much so that, in January, we have our national conference. We will be having a very keen focus in this area. So, we have Steve Davies talking about the curriculum reform and the implications for well-being. We have Professor Robin Banerjee, who's done some significant work across Wales, from one of the universities. He's produced some really interesting papers for public health. We have Graham Donaldson telling us how he sees the well-being agenda in terms of the curriculum reform. We've got Estyn telling us how they see the evaluation—the impact on evaluating schools—and we're very much going to be looking at how we raise attainment through the well-being agenda. And the 'Together for Children and Young People' work that's been taking place: how do we get the integrated support services? So, it is very much a critical part, I think, of a lot of our thinking.

Okay. So, in terms of the leadership teams in our schools and colleges, to what extent do you believe they've taken on board the importance of the emotional well-being and emotional resilience agenda? Would you say that it's in no way a tick-box exercise—that there really is the necessary commitment there amongst those crucial senior leadership teams? 

I can speak on behalf of my senior leadership team. We have well-being as a weekly agenda item. We bought into the idea that unless children are well and their well-being is looked after, they won't be attaining at all. And so, a couple of years ago, pre Donaldson, we brought in mindfulness programmes to address just that, really. We were aware of the greater need for dealing with stress and anxiety issues with our young people. So, certainly, from a senior management point of view, it's crucial; unless the children are well they're not going to attain, and our outcomes depend on them being well. 

10:55

And I would say, generally, working with headteachers, they absolutely do get it. I think this is where our researchers are really helpful because we need the evidence base to say: where schools are investing that time, are there some attainment data actually telling us that by that investment we're getting the outcomes? So, that's why the university and the researchers of this world are going to be critical in our journey. 

I think the other part that shows that—I think, fundamentally, all of our—. Certainly, I think, when we talk about Monmouthshire, you know, our school leaders are there to care and support for their children; I think they see that as their fundamental role. But, certainly, when you talk about children who are achieving or children who might not be achieving what we hope they would, you know, the awareness and the detail with which they can share their understanding of the challenges those children are facing clearly show that they take full cognisance of those challenges and those children's well-being. So, where children are affected by things like domestic violence and so on—and that's having such a huge impact in traumatic and attachment issues—they kind of bring those through, they understand those, and they can articulate them very clearly and the measures they're putting in place to support children as well who are having to face those issues. 

Yes. I entirely take your point in terms of the connection between emotional well-being and academic attainment, but, nonetheless, in a survey we did as a committee, some young people believe that they're not on a par in some of those schools and colleges, that the concentration is much more on academic attainment. How would you respond to those views? 

I think at the moment we know that there has been significant pressure on schools to improve attainment and I think that goes right across the piece from primary through to secondary. We do have higher expectations for our children's outcomes. I think, at times, we need to be really very aware of the pressures that can put on children, and I think that's one of the things we see at secondary is increasing levels of anxiety around examinations and so on, and people feeling, 'How are they going to get through those?' But, again, we're beginning to see our schools very clearly recognise that and put in place support structures to minimise that impact, to make sure people are aware that, if a school has supported a child throughout their educational journey, then these hurdles—which is what they are—shouldn't present those anxieties to them. So, I think it's something that we'll continue to develop and understand, but, the greater the weight we put on end of key stage outcomes, we are likely to see increasing anxiety from children. So, we've got to be careful about how we message our expectations and so on with schools as well. 

Thank you. I'll move on now to Mark, if that's okay. 

We heard from the children's commissioner at a previous session, I think, some disappointment that the Together for Chlidren and Young People programme, to her at least, didn't appear to be integrated into the reform of the curriculum in this area and I wonder if that's a perception our witnesses today would share.

I think there are several aspects to the Together for Children and Young People's programme. I've been involved in some of the work stream work, which has really focused on integrated working and looking at an early help offer. So, it's not as advanced as we would have expected it to be and I think, you know, there have been some changes to the work streams. But, nevertheless, I think that there are some models that are already developing across local authorities, so this is much more the strategic angle on how we work together. So, we're looking at our school nurse, our school psychologist, our primary mental health worker and our school counsellor—instead of having individual visits and individual roles within a school, that we bring all that together, and that is already happening in several local authorities. So, I think the Together for Children and Young People bit is where we've been starting to share that work and look at how we can develop something right across Wales that has a model of service delivery. So, then what you're talking about is much more around early identification, targeted school support, how do we build professional development of the workforce, and how can we facilitate drop-in surgeries. So, actually, 'Do I need to see the CAMHS high-level person?', or is it that, very early on, if I get, as a young person, my help from a champion within the school, an ELSA, which are well-embedded right across Wales—that's our champion support assistants—or I get something from a group of people who are working together and have a continuum, so they don't just offer—. It's not just about school counselling per se, but actually how all those people are working together so that we've got the right person supporting the right level of need. So, for me, that's where some of the work has taken place around the Together for Children and Young People work streams: it's actually been trying to tease out how those models could be developed. 

11:00

You were mentioning your upcoming conference then; there may be some good stuff being talked about at that conference in this area, but is there any link between what you were just talking to the committee about and the reform of the curriculum and perhaps some of what's happening within the pioneer schools on the health and well-being area of learning and experience? Are those programmes connected at all? 

I think there have been conversations between the two departments in the Welsh Government, and I think there's—. But I wouldn't say—. You know, I think that's something that's probably being developed. 

Are you aware of what's going on in the pioneer schools in this area? 

And do you think they link back to the Together for Children and Young People programme or not, beyond these conversations between Welsh Government departments you refer to? 

I know that there have been conversations with the Together for Children and Young People—some of the people on the board, but I'm not aware that that's being developed.

Do you think closer and better integration would be a good thing in that area? Is that something you want to see or is that—

Potentially, but that—

—perhaps not the priority it was for the children's commissioner when she spoke to us? 

Definitely. You know, I think that there needs to be more understanding of what's happening. But the curriculum in itself—so developing your personal, social curriculum and your well-being curriculum is one area, but what we—. Really, I think, if you get your model of that outreach team—those people that we talked about, all the integrated services—they are part of a school system. So, you—rather than say, 'Well, are they aware of the reform?', of course they need to be and be part of how that's developing, but the other bit in it is how you develop your support services as part of a continuum. So, in a sense, these support services are providing the early help offer for the youngsters because the universal offer is the curriculum, if you see what I mean. Does that make sense? 

Thank you, Chair. What does a whole-school approach look like from your perspective to the resilience of mental health in children? And what kind of role do you foresee local authorities playing in building that resilience? 

I think, as Nichola has already mentioned, it's more of a holistic approach within the school but also the outreach services as well. We have the support services meeting with us on a monthly basis; we have the primary mental health care nurse, the ELSA team, the school nurse. Those are the outreach people, but we also, within the school, look to restorative practice, school council, and the children taking a lead on their well-being within the school, really. 

I think what we've established very early on is that it needs to be a graduated response, but it needs to be on the ground. We need to build capacity within our school system, rather than always looking for the outside agencies or the specialist support. So, we recognise very early—as Nichola has referred to—in terms of that sort of early help offer, around, 'How can we use our more specialist services to support that at the ground level?' So, something like emotional literacy support assistants—which we've talked about, which are our ELSAs—are actually school staff based in schools and actually how we support them to build the capacity. So, we're looking at building all of those emotional literacy type of strategies for young people that may traditionally have gone out to, 'Do we need a school counsellor?', 'Do we need our psychologist in?', 'Do we need our primary CAMHS?' or 'Do we need our more specialist services?' How can we actually build that capacity from within so that we're not playing a waiting game? How can we provide that early intervention so, therefore, some of those pupils, some of those young people, actually won't need those more specialist services? So, in terms of that whole-school approach, it's how can we build that capacity within, but actually from providing some support. So, we provide supervision for our ELSA team, for our champions, so that they can support the pupils in schools, which is a much more effective way of working. We know what the demand on services looks like, but, actually, if I work with one child I'm working with one child. If I work with an ELSA, then that ELSA can support 20 children. Therefore, it just seems a much more sustainable model, particularly in the times that we're in.  

11:05

I would want to underpin again that school systems really, really matter here. So, again, drawing from the Banerjee research that the Welsh Government and public health commissioned, it's clear that, no matter what intervention you use, it is going to be how those school systems are all going to work together, so are universal and targeted. We've got plenty of them, when we talk about our child and family services, our youth services, our EP nurse and school counsellor, our lead manager in the school, and our support champion. If you just imagine how you are going to co-ordinate all of that—. But that's the critical bit, because otherwise what you end up with is repetition and overlap.

So, one of the models—. Some of the local authorities are rolling out an integrated support offer. Then, it's being clear with schools on what are already the range of interventions that are happening. We know that there are solution-focused approaches that take place. We know that there is restorative practice. We know that anti-bullying takes place. We know that there are school counselling services. Those are all things that are happening within schools. So, it is drawing a system together that pulls it all together, and that it's not disparate. That's where the support services need to work, then, with the schools to provide that wraparound approach.

I think, in terms of what the local authority's role is in that, it's the local authority's role to actually hold that frame for the schools, because the authority, I think, has a key responsibility in understanding the demand that exists within its area—its county or county borough—and then to make sure that schools fully appreciate the weight that we're putting on well-being and the importance to our communities. Because there's an integral part there around the health and well-being of our communities, and the health and well-being of our young people within them. So, it's important that we set that frame and our expectations very high in the first instance, but then, as well, that we undertake our key role as both commissioners and conveners of partnerships and so on to make sure that we are working with our partners, so that schools fully understand that range of provision from universal all the way through that kind of graduated response, right up to having high degrees of confidence, when they do make referrals into our very high tiers of need, that those structures are working and we're all working together. So, I think that kind of framework that the local authorities can put in place is fundamental to that. 

Before you do that, that sounds great, and what you described, Kathryn, sounds great. But how universally is that being taken forward across Wales?

So, specifically around—

Well, where you've got this whole-school approach where it's built in for all pupils. I mean, it sounds lovely, but is it just in your patch?

No. ELSA started in Wales in Bridgend, maybe eight to 10 years ago. It is now in 20 local authorities, just about. So, we just looked at all of the local authorities and introduced it to ones where it is not happening. So, we're looking at—. We train support assistants from schools. So, they're school staff, and we train—. So, education psychology services across Wales train up to 40 ELSAs every term to deliver these emotional support programmes in their own schools, and they are then supported through supervision by their local education psychology service. So, it's in nearly every authority in Wales, and it's in a significant percentage of schools. So, in Bridgend, it's in 90 per cent of schools; Cardiff, we are looking at 70 per cent upwards; RCT—. So, this is the data that we have. So, we know that it's increasing. It's been recently introduced into Powys, into Wrexham, into Flintshire. It's readily established across Monmouth, Neath Port Talbot, Pembroke. So, we know that it is in local authorities, and we know that we've got these staff—multiple staff in some schools—delivering programmes. We are seeing that, in terms of building capacity—. And it is one vehicle. If we go back to Nichola's point on Robin Banerjee's report, it's sometimes not what you do; it's how you do it. And, if you do that effectively, you are providing a low-level intervention that actually then prevents some of those pupils needing more significant specialist services.

11:10

I've got a couple of Members on this now. Is that primary and secondary?

I just wanted to make a remark and I just wondered if you could respond to it, Kathryn. So, we've just had a headteacher from Bridgend, who's come in and presented a completely different picture in terms of the level of support that's available and been lamenting the lack of access to educational psychologists, which is being eroded even further in your local authority in terms of access in her school. So, I'm alarmed that the picture you're presenting is nothing like the picture that's being presented from headteachers on the front line.

I think the difficulty is that we identified many years ago around the fact that if we looked at traditional EP services, we could not meet the demand in terms of providing some specific interventions around individuals. So, we made a decision, which is now obviously being replicated across Wales that, actually, we are most effective when we are looking at how we can build capacity, how we can support others to support—. You know, we still have the demands, we still have the requests for the individual support at school levels, and we appreciate that there have been shrinkages, public spending cuts—all of that has affected our capacity to do the, 'How many visits can we offer to schools?' But, within Bridgend, we have those ELSAs and we are providing the supervision for the ELSAs to provide that low-level intervention for our young people, and we've got an evidence base to support that.

I know, I came in at the end of it.

You're all saying this is a priority, and quite rightly it ought to be a priority, but the reality is that you're cutting back on those educational psychologist services in almost every local authority. That's putting more pressure on the schools, who feel ill-equipped—. Their teaching staff—this is what we were told—feel ill-equipped to be able to cope with this stuff in spite of the sort of training that you've tried to roll out and the specialism that you've tried to develop with some of these members of staff. So—

But this isn't with teaching staff, and there is a difference in terms of the feedback that we get. These are support assistants who provide these weekly programmes—

I understand that, but the head teachers are responsible for all of the staff in their schools, with respect, including those teaching support assistants who, you say, are replacing—or supplementing, if you like, the work of the educational psychologists

I would definitely not say 'replacing'.

Well, it's part of a graduated response, because we want to build capacity at all of those levels, so, actually, we can then deal with more specialist and actually more complex cases and, for some young people, they don't get to that stage.

I think that's the really important part of it. What we've talked about this morning is that when you think about the key conditions of working that the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 talks around, you know, we're talking around really strong preventative measures. That's a key fundamental part. Universal provision. Much of that has been alluded to in terms of the children themselves taking a lead in that, and I think that's really important, so children recognising what well-being is. But then there's this sense around different types of early interventions. I'll have had exactly the same conversations with my headteachers about their availability of specialist services. Sometimes, as we think about how we change services, how we change structures of intervention and so on, people do kind of hark back to a willingness to look to individual professionals and so on, but I think we have to think about a different model—that graduation; a different type of intervention much earlier. And if it's to become financially sustainable—

I'm not suggesting that we don't need more resilience in our schools and to equip the teaching workforce, and, as I said, I've been quite impressed with the idea of training individuals in schools so that they've got someone permanently onsite who they can go to for a lower level intervention. I think what was clear, though, was that, clearly, those schools still feel completely ill-equipped to be able to have the capacity to deal with the problems that are presenting themselves because of this significant increase in young people presenting with mental health problems.

I've got Julie who wants to come in on this and then Llyr.

One of the other comments that the previous panel made was that they didn't feel that educational psychologists were the people to deal with emotional well-being, that they were more focused on the learning aspects. So, I don't know what your comment is about that, because, obviously, you see them as having a key role for setting up this system.

Yes. It comes back to our original point that Will made at the very beginning, which is that no learning will take place if we don't have that emotional and good mental health. So, it is integral that we're actually supporting the well-being and the mental health of those young people through our role. And taking Darren's point, which, obviously, was wade in an earlier panel, there is such a demand on a shrinking service to be able to offer a full range of what is potential within the education psychology service.

So, what we know is that we will have demands from schools and from local authorities in terms of the statutory role, in terms of some specific directions. But, actually, what we can offer, and what we do offer, is this range of support for young people around that mental health and training for staff and for ELSAs around this low level—and also for some, more significant levels—around well-being.

We're not a one answer for everything. We do need to work with other services, which is what we do. Coming back to Nichola's response around working in an integrated way, and how we can be very effective if we link with our primary CAMHS, if we link with our counselling service and the staff that we have in school so that we're not duplicating—. But there's very clearly a wider remit than just learning because, in order to unpick the learning, very often it's the mental health and the well-being that underpins that, and it is a role that we are delivering on a daily basis.

11:15

I must say, I do agree with Darren, that it is quite striking, the different views that are being presented by two different sets of people.

I work with the system that has just been blamed, and it does work very well. We have monthly meetings with all of these different outside agencies, not just the ed psych—the ed psych comes, the primary mental health nurse comes, the nurse, and the counsellor. And it does work, and together we then identify problems. We go through a list of every child and identify problems, and together we work as a team.

Yes, okay. It is absolutely striking. I mean, I wasn't expecting everything to be rosy but I certainly wasn't expecting the grim picture that was painted. And I'm quite disturbed by it, actually, this morning.

You list counsellors, school nurses, but the evidence we've had is that, in some cases, they might not be there. They don't exist in some contexts.

But that comes back to my level. That's where the local authority comes in because if you look at—. So, you've got that level and then you've got a higher level with Welsh Government.

I have to make sure, with my head of CAMHS, and I sit down and have those meetings and say, 'I want your primary mental health team to work with my teams so we can provide a better integrated service.' Otherwise, the system works like this: primary mental health going into a school, school nursing going into a school, some of my support services all going into a school and doing different things and nobody talking to each other. So, we come back to what we said about the Banerjee paper, which is saying, 'How do we get a model and an integrated service that's going to talk to each other and work together?'

It's not. Not in Pembrokeshire it's not.

A lot of the evidence we've had in the surveys that we did as well painted quite a grim picture, actually, in terms of accessing services.

And to give you an example, I actually asked the deputy head of the Porthcawl school what support was available to her outside a specified two hours and she said, 'Nothing.'

What we've seen, certainly, in terms of Monmouthshire, is that there are increasing levels of demand, clearly, and you'll all be aware of that. I think schools are able to access certain amounts of provision by right, as it were, but we've also seen schools developing their own specific and bespoke arrangements. We've seen people purchasing, as it were, more time from services in order to react to the needs that they have. And I think that's important, that local schools—.

So, the notion of a blanket provision at a certain amount, in a very universal way, is one thing. Then, individual schools shaping what they need locally, because—. We only have four secondary schools in Monmouthshire. The needs in those four secondary schools are hugely different. If I were to compare Monmouth Comprehensive School to King Henry VIII, the demand, the level of challenge in certain areas are very different. Those schools respond differently in those ways, and that's really important. And I think that sense around what provision looks like across Wales will depend on where you are and, below that level, it will depend on the type of school and the challenges that that locality presents, as well.

11:20

And the types of services that you have available to access.

Yes, absolutely. And, for us, one of our challenges in terms of Monmouthshire, is that, beyond the statutory that we deliver, the availability of third sector organisations is far more limited in a rural county like Monmouthshire, or, I guess, like Pembrokeshire as well, than it is in some of our city authorities. So, those are some of the challenges that we face and we’ve got to try and find the solutions that allow us to shape that way.

So, it’s patchy, it’s inconsistent, and that’s inevitable to an extent. You’ve articulated how you, as an authority, should maybe try to bring that coherence and co-ordination into the system. Does the Welsh Government not have a role on a national level in doing more of that? Is that there or is that lacking?

I think that we would always look to is the ability to learn from good practice elsewhere, and I think that’s really important. So, there’s sharing of good practice. Guidance is far more preferable to actual direction, I think, because of that local need and the ability to shape that. But I think things like the way that the ADEW sub-groups are coming together, the conferences and so on, obviously, it features far more prominently, now, in the new Estyn framework than it did in the old Estyn inspection framework . Those types of things are bringing it to a—. If it needed highlighting, they’re doing that and I think that’s giving us a far greater degree of awareness across the country in terms of what’s happening.

Thank you, Chair. Is it the case that schools are cutting back on mental health services, such as counselling? And, if that’s the case, how would that sit with your responsibility to provide counselling services for children and young people in your area?

We absolutely provide counselling services within Pembrokeshire—it’s ring-fenced funding. So, we don’t envisage that that would be less and we are exploring how we extend that across primary schools as well, with a range of therapies. So, our early help offer is critical.

But I probably would underpin, within that question, a continuum of needs, which is going back to what Will was saying, really: 'Do I need to see the school counsellor at this point in time, because, actually, once I leave school, I won’t necessarily be able to drop in and see the school counsellor? Or is it that I can talk to my champion, my ELSA, or whoever is on site within the school context?' So, Pippa would probably be able to describe a whole series of people you could go and talk to, and, for me, it’s about making the best use of our money around school counselling services. So, I think Will would say the same—his funding for school counselling is ring-fenced, but how are we going to get the greater balance solved? Because I sometimes get concerned that some young people are accessing school counselling services when, actually, something lower down, earlier on, could’ve helped them. And that’s about the resilience, because, when they leave school, they don’t go to a school counsellor when they’ve got a certain type of need.

I think it’s around this graduated response, it’s this continuum. In terms of school counselling, it’s just part of the process where if we already have the lower level intervention of school staff, there’s no stigma around it because they’re just our school staff, rather than, ‘I’m going to the counsellor’, or ‘I choose to’ or ‘not to’, and is that accessible?

If we go back to Nichola’s previous point around the multi-agency working, we had that in Bridgend, working very effectively, but it’s the cuts to public funding, and we’ve had our primary CAMHS, at the moment, taken off. If you have those people together, problem solving with school staff, so they come in to say, ‘Can we talk about this young person?’ and then, ‘Who is best placed?’ It’s such an effective use of time. We would talk about 10 or 12 children, four or five different members of staff, in one short session and be able to determine who is the best placed person to then move on. That’s the bit, so it can work effectively; it has. We’ve just had this squeeze and we’ve got to distribute services elsewhere or we’ve got fewer services to spread around. So, you’re still working that way, and we’re fighting to retain something and we’ve lost a bit of that, because, in ABMU, primary CAMHS have been withdrawn.

11:25

I was just going to say, again, it's a school's position, really, to do away with the stigma—I've heard that word mentioned a couple of times. There is no stigma around mental health any more, that has to be removed. You have mental health, you have physical health, and that's up to the school to disapply the idea of that. Within a school situation, I know that I have a nurse, a school counsellor, on different days, our ELSAs, and so we can signpost our young people with these different needs as required.

Nichola mentioned the fact that, often, people feel that they should see a counsellor, rather than an ELSA or another member of the school staff, potentially a teacher. One of the challenges that we've seen regionally is that, because of the pressures on CAMHS and accessing CAMHS services, people are also staying with school counselling when, actually, there should be a quicker referral into higher tier services. That's a challenge, as well. So, the challenges on school counselling are at both ends. People escalate to counselling, sometimes, more quickly than they perhaps should, and there are other people who could help, but, at the same time, counselling services are having to keep children and young people with them to provide them some support that they're not accessing through the CAMHS service.

Thank you. Julie—are you all right with that, Michelle?

You've got two lots of questions, though. You've got therapeutic interventions in schools—

Yes, well, that basically was asking whether you felt there should be therapeutic interventions. I think you've all said there should be and that you have a system to look at it, basically.

And they are, and they're at very different levels. So, we have interventions going into school, SAP and Thrive, a huge amount of work around ACEs currently, and ELSA. So, there are lots of therapeutic interventions within school, on the ground, and actually support services going in to support them.

And that's supporting children who don't reach the threshold for CAMHS, and hopefully may not then need the—

Early, early, early. And hopefully may not need actually need the—

The most helpful one—. I think Professor Banerjee came to talk to lead professionals in each local authority. The critical bit varies. There's loads of really good interventions, and I think one of the things that Welsh Government were looking at at that time was: is there a golden bullet? Is there one intervention that would really crack our issue? Actually, there's plenty of research evidence to say that all these good works that are taking place, all these good interventions, actually have got an evidence base and they're pretty sound. But, again, it's going back to: it's not what you do, it's how the systems and the wraparound within the school and within the support services work together. So, I know I'm going to keep mentioning that point, but that's the critical bit, for me.

Given that we've touched again on the whole-school system and we've also touched on this tension between an individual's well-being and academic achievement, and we've established that fragile emotional resilience can have an impact on learning, the NAHT told us that they wouldn't expect schools to have to pay for a lot of these services, but isn't that contradictory to a lot of the stuff that we're hearing about this whole-school approach?

I think that sense around the universality of provision that you have from really excellent teaching, from the new curriculum as that's developed, the importance of your understanding of yourself—understanding your well-being and being able to manage your well-being and understand that—is a fundamental part of what our schools do and should continue to do in the future. So, I think that's part of that. I think what we need clarity around is that piece around—. We're recognising that they are teachers, they're there to provide an education to our children, they're not there to be social workers and those things. That's where we need to work really effectively with our system to bring those skills in, but recognise the contribution that, as a teacher, as being, for all of our primary school children, the person who they relate to, other than their parents—and in some cases potentially more than their parents. On a day-to-day basis, they are the person you see, the person you form a very strong bond with. They have a key role in establishing that. So, there's a fundamental role, I think, for our teachers to do that, but it is recognising the contribution that our other partners, such as the NHS, have to make in terms of the provision of very specialist services to make sure that we maintain children’s well-being throughout their lives.

11:30

It’s out of our remit, because it’s beyond me to tell health how to spend their money. But if there was a recommendation that we would want to make, it’s that we ring-fence the primary mental health worker, and that the school nurse is prioritised, so that we still have those services where we can develop the early help offer and the preventative support that is in place where we know that that works. So, that would be a critical bit for me.

But those other partners, having cut their services year after year, may not be in a position to offer that service, and then want to—

Well, it’s not fair to say that they don’t see our perspective, because the head of CAMHS in my local area, Angela Lodwick, we work very closely, and we absolutely believe in the same model. We know that the consultation-led use of her support staff, the primary mental health worker, actually will save her down the line, because she won’t have a queue of people waiting to go into that end of her business if she puts in the early help offer. So, this is where I think Welsh Government—. And having some sort of steering group where you have your head of nursing in Wales, you have your head of primary mental health, you have key educational professionals all talking to each other, looking at the pressures and having an absolute agreement about what we can do to do the early help offer. If it gets eroded because we’ve got less money and people are not going to invest in that end, I would not like to think what that’s going to look like in five years’ time.

Emotional well-being has been part of the common inspection framework since 2010. Is that making a difference? To ask the question quickly.

It’s more to the fore in the new inspection framework, isn’t it, than it was in the old one? So, there is parity between the different sections of looking after the whole child.

And would that make an impact in a school, that’s the question? That’s the point of an inspection. Is it having an impact?

I think it’s really important. I think the recognition of it, that well-being in a very broad sense is about how we look after and support our children, is a key part and is recognised in the new framework in terms of care and support and well-being. It’s really important, and I think schools will respond to that because they will have to respond. They’ll have to give their evidence as to how they do that. I think it’s really important that the inspectorate look in the very broadest sense at well-being, and they are constrained to some of the traditional indicators we’ve used in the past around well-being, around things like attendance or behaviour and so on. But we look and think about what schools are doing in that very broad sense to support their children.

At the moment we’ve obviously got a new framework in place from this September just gone, so I think it would be interesting to see how that plays through.

Yes, I just wanted to ask about, in particular, these relationships between CAMHS services and your services. You seemed to suggest earlier, Nichola and Pippa, that the relationships were quite good in Pembrokeshire, but that’s certainly, obviously, not some of the evidence that we’ve received from elsewhere. One particular cause for concern was some of the responses that we received about looked-after children, particularly where they’re placed outside of county, and how they are then prohibited from accessing local CAMHS services, sometimes, and are having to be referred back to the CAMHS services in their sending local authority area. I’ve had a particular case that was brought to my attention about somebody in Pembrokeshire. So, what is happening to ensure that their mental health needs are met?

I chair the group that actually oversees placements. We have a clinical psychologist, so for me she’s the critical person who knows about the very small number of young people that we have placed out of county.

Can I just stop you there? What about people placed in Pembrokeshire from another county who can’t access CAMHS services from the Hywel Dda health board because they’re prevented from doing so because they’ve been sent from another local authority outside of the Hywel Dda area? That’s in your county.

I’d have to take that outside of this meeting, because I don’t—

So, there’s never been any discussion on those sorts of situations, in spite of the fact that we received reports from all of the previous panel saying that this is happening. That’s never been discussed with Hywel Dda by this strategic group that you’re part of.

I’m not aware of the situation you’re talking about.

11:35

It's never been discussed, even though it's an issue that everybody in the previous session said was there. What about in your local authority areas? 

I'm aware of some of those challenges, and we've got an ongoing discussion, actually, with Bridgend at the moment in terms of just managing out a process around that. Clearly, I think from a starting position I don't think it would be wrong to say that you'd want people to receive the services where they are. 

I think that's what we'd look to work to achieve. I think if there are discrepancies around that, then I think that would be something that we—

Particularly if they're in a long-term foster care placement, or something like that.

Yes, absolutely.

And we have local arrangements between local authorities, so when it comes to education, when it comes to education psychology, we deliver it. Again, it's outside our remit—

But those arrangements are not in place within the NHS. That appears to be the stumbling block. I'm not holding you guys responsible for this; I'm just asking for your perspective on it. [Inaudible.] It is very disturbing, isn't it? Okay. 

Okay, thank you. We've come to the end of our time, so can I thank you very much for attending this morning and for answering all our questions? You will receive a transcript to check for accuracy in due course. The committee will now break and be back here at 11:45 please. Thank you. 

Gohiriwyd y cyfarfod rhwng 11:36 ac 11:49.

The meeting adjourned between 11:36 and 11:49.

11:45
5. Ymchwiliad i Iechyd Emosiynol a Meddyliol Plant a Phobl Ifanc - Sesiwn dystiolaeth 5 (drwy fideo gynadledda)
5. Inquiry into the Emotional and Mental Health of Children and Young People - Evidence session 5 (via video conference)

Can I welcome everyone back for our fifth evidence session on our inquiry into the emotional and mental health of children and young people? This item is a video conference item, where we're going to talk about mindfulness. And I'm delighted that, up in our Colwyn Bay office, we've got Tabitha Sawyer, who is assistant headteacher and mindfulness lead at Ysgol Pen y Bryn; Arun Ramesh, who is a school mindfulness ambassador at Ysgol Pen y Bryn; Amber Stock, who is also a school mindfulness ambassador at Ysgol Pen y Bryn; and Sarah Silverton, who is a freelance mindfulness teacher and trainer, working through the Centre for Mindfulness and Practice at Bangor University. So, welcome to all of you. We're really pleased that you can join our committee this morning. I understand that you'd like to say a few words before we start.

11:50

Hello, my name is Arun Ramesh. I'm 11 years old and I go to the mindfulness club. I feel that mindfulness is really important for everyone because it helps us enjoy what's happening right now and the past doesn't distract us as much when we do mindfulness.

Mindfulness can help us in a lot of ways, but it can help us do stuff in a mindfulness manner or just in calming down.

Hi, my name's Amber. I'm 10 years old, and mindfulness is really important to me because it helps me calm down when, say, my sister is annoying me or if something bad has happened. I really enjoy mindfulness, especially the clubs. There are lots of different practices that help me do different things.

I'm Tabitha Sawyer, assistant headteacher at Ysgol Pen y Bryn. I've been the lead on mindfulness in the school for the last seven years. It's been a wonderful thing to be involved with and, throughout that time, it's been the children who have really steered it with us and wanted us to carry on with it because of how they've responded to mindfulness—that they really, as you've just heard, enjoy it and recognise that it can help them through their lives.

Okay, thank you very much for that. We've got some questions now, which will come from different members of the committee. So, if it's okay with you now, we'll start with the first questions from Hefin.

Hello. Can you tell me how—this is perhaps for Tabitha, but also for everyone really—mindfulness fits in with the general concept of emotional well-being? How does it fit in with the bigger picture of emotional well-being in the school?

It's really become an ethos in the school to appreciate the here and now and recognise how it can help the children's well-being. The children do get lessons and they look at how it can help with difficulties that they're having in life—maybe if they're feeling angry about things, et cetera. It really encompasses all school life. If they come in from the playground and they're feeling particularly 'fizzy', as we call it, they sometimes come in and ask for a practice and they recognise that it can just steady them. So, I would say that it encompasses the whole school life and that it's something, they've also recognised, not just in school, but out of school, that can help them. So, in terms of emotional well-being, they're telling us how it helps them all the time.

Can I ask your mindfulness ambassadors: what does 'fizzy' feel like? What is that?

'Fizzy' kind of feels like 'not calm'—the opposite of calm. So, say you're trying to write a story description and your handwriting is going all wobbly and you feel like you can't stay still, you'd maybe do a mindfulness practice. I personally would do a petal practice, as I feel that it's quite convenient for classroom use, because all I have to do—

Petal practice is when you breathe out, you go small—the petal goes smaller. If you breathe in, it goes bigger, like that.

I want to try that now. That's really handy. Are there other things that you do? What other things do you do?

There are lots of different practices like FOFBOC—feet on floor, bottom on chair—and shake and freeze, which the infants and younger children really like. There's also tongue in chest, and occasionally in the mindfulness club we do mindful eating, which encourages us to do stuff in a mindful manner.

11:55

Okay. And are there any other things, beyond mindfulness, that are helpful in that way, or is it that mindfulness is the thing?

I think mindfulness is the main thing we use. I don't think we use very much else. I can't really think of anything else we could use in that situation.

One of the things that we are drawing on is that we sometimes call it 'mindfulness', but it's about awareness and it's about choice and it's about where we place our focus and just recognising all of that in a very friendly way, so that we're working with ourselves however we are, whatever's around for us in that moment in a friendly way.

Well, mindfulness practises all those skills.

So, you know, we're practising paying attention, we're practising attitude to friendliness and curiosity, we're tuning in to what's going right for us as well as difficulties that might be around in a kind of even way, so that we're not prioritising—. It's not positive thinking in that we're just looking to make things feel okay; we are working with difficulty as it arises, too, so that we are willing to be with whatever's here in a way that's going to be supportive of ourselves in each moment. So, it practices a lot of skills that might be around in other approaches, but it's a broader reach, if you like.

The main themes are connection and choosing, being aware of body and mind as well. So, it's that general awareness—general awareness of the self and others around you as well. What's interesting with the lessons that we do is that the children learn about the brain and recognise how mindfulness can affect the mind and how, at certain times, when maybe they're feeling angry, that could be the amygdala that kicks in and that there's a choice, and mindfulness can help you to step back from that. Children, do you want to speak about that? Amber, do you want to—?

Yes, okay. So, there's the prefrontal cortex, and then the amygdala, the insula and the hippocampus, and—

What would you say about the prefrontal cortex? That you can—.

The prefrontal cortex is the front part of your brain. It's the part that makes decisions and helps you with concentrating. The amygdala helps with reactions: flight, fright or freeze. The insula is the emotional part of your brain, so it links what's happening and an emotional thing that your body will do.

And the hippocampus is linking old experiences to new experiences.

Okay, thank you. I've got a question from Darren now.

The connection with mindfulness and the brain is that the children are recognising that, actually, there's a choice back to there and that they don't have to react in certain situations; they can step back and their prefrontal cortex can kick in and make the choices.

There was a lovely story, wasn't there, of a 10-year-old lad who came in from the playground and told his teacher that he'd been tempted to hit somebody else, and he said, 'And that was my amygdala, wasn't it? And then I chose not to hit him, and that was my prefrontal cortex.' [Laughter.] So, what we're practising is stepping away to see clearly what's happening and then make choices based on awareness of that. We call that 'decentring' in mindfulness.

I just wanted to ask you, if I can, about mindfulness in the early years, because, obviously, a lot of what we've heard about just now has been about junior-school-age children—and it's great to see Arun and Amber talking so passionately about their experiences of mindfulness. I'm really proud of you, kids. But I just want to know about the early years and how you have experienced mindfulness with children in the early years and whether you've got any signs of that being beneficial to younger kids.

The situation in schools is it's always busy, busy, busy and the children's lives are busy, busy. So, the mindfulness gives them the opportunity to just be and have that stillness. We have implemented the curriculum 'The Present' into the school with various practices and activities, and what we're finding is the children really respond to it. It's almost as if children are nearer mindfulness the younger they are, because they can be completely absorbed in and focused on something, and it's as if they're taught out of it as they go through the school. So, to actually really embrace those feelings, those skills, at that point, we're finding it's really benefiting. Obviously, the school's been doing this for seven years, so we can see, year on year, how this is affecting the children in a positive way.

12:00

I think the other thing, perhaps, to add there is that, although inevitably the focus is on children and building skills for them, it's equally for teachers. So, the children, the little ones, are pretty focused on the present moment, but what the teachers are doing is building language with them to explore that, to value that, to tune in and get more comfortable that this is part of an everyday life, that they might talk about what they're sensing, what they're noticing, not just what they're thinking. And the teachers are practising that too: they're practising just being with children and the experience of something, not just about getting a job done or completing a task or doing things right, the process of it; the experience of it is equally important.

There's been real benefits for the teachers personally. Exactly as you say, you are with the children, you're not thinking about that staff meeting after school et cetera. Your mindfulness practice actually helps you, I believe, be a better teacher, and helps your well-being as well.

One of the teachers at Pen y Bryn was saying that she was also surprised how able the children were to tune in, even in year 1. They were talking about weather and whether they liked snow or not, and one child was able to say, 'I know I like it because my body tells me I like it'. Another child said, 'I know I like it because my head tells me I like it.' So, just to kind of recognise how they experience things, to be wise about what's happening within them, how they're learning, how they know. She was really surprised that they were able to do that at that age.

Yes, the younger children have really surprised us with how they can articulate their understanding. It has been a revelation, actually.

Thanks, Chair. It's good to hear how useful and helpful mindfulness is. We did have mindfulness classes in the Assembly at one time, but I don't think we do any longer.

They're about to start again, so that's good. I just wonder if Arun and Amber could tell us about any times when you were particularly worried or concerned about something and mindfulness helped you. So, not just your annoying sister, Amber, but something perhaps a bit more serious than that—although I know annoying sisters can be very serious as well. Can you just give us examples of where mindfulness has been really useful when you've been particularly worried or concerned about something?

Last year—do you know the national tests? I was really worried with the English one, because I just couldn't find the right words in the paragraph. So, what I did was I did finger breathing during the start, before I did it, and when I went into the middle of actually doing the test I was wondering how to do it, so I did another finger breathing practice, literally just 30 seconds, and I was able to find the words. So, I think, if you slow down, and mindfulness helps you slow down, it can really help you.

12:05

Mine's the same as Arun's, in a test, but this happened a few months ago in a maths test. I was really excited for it, but during the test I noticed a question and it was really, really hard. I was really struggling and I was getting a bit worried, so then I did a petal practice and it helped me just calm down. So, even though I didn't get it right, it doesn't matter because at least I tried, and I did mindfulness to help me to stop stressing about it.

That's great. Thank you very much. They're really good examples, and it's great to see how it benefits your education in such a direct way. Thank you.

Thank you. Can I just ask as well about the key findings from the research that you've done on the impact of integrating mindfulness into primary schools? I think that's you, Sarah, isn't it?

Yes. We sent you some papers through, as well, which have a lot more detail, but certainly, the research that we've done so far—. Dusana Dorjee has done the first research on primary school work in the UK. Much of it's in the states, so it's very difficult to relate to what we're doing here. What we've found is that pupils' metacognitive awareness—their awareness of the way that they think—is shifted, that their attention is improved, and that their attitude to learning has been shifted too.

And also self-regulation.

And the emotional self-regulation. So, one of the key neuroscience findings that Dusana's found so far is that it seems to change negative affect for children—so, a low mood bias, a kind of way of perceiving situations. So, that that seems to be shiftable. And also finding that children—young children and older adolescents—were able to what she would describe as 'inhibit' their response, so be less distractible, less pulled away by other thoughts or things happening in the classroom.

And also the appropriate choices, as well, came through in the research.

And you two have been involved in research just this week—with electrodes on their heads.

I haven't done it yet.

So, there's still research being done at the moment. There was one, actually, on the teachers, as well, wasn't there, that was done, and that showed improved health and a feeling of well-being, and that transpired in sickness days as well, when the study was done.

My questions, maybe, are more for Sarah and Tabitha. We know that there are big reforms happening now in terms of the curriculum in Wales with the Donaldson work, and my understanding is that Pen y Bryn isn't a pioneer school, but my question basically is: how can we ensure that the good practice, clearly, that we're hearing about here today, and that some of us have seen a while ago, can be hard-wired into the new proposals so that we make sure that this good practice is actually rolled out further afield?

Certainly, for Pen y Bryn, for the last seven years we've had an open door and we've tried to share our practice as much as possible, but there are limitations to how we can do that. The more and more I look into the Donaldson report and the curriculum reform now—the Wales mission—the four purposes just are so in line with what we're doing and the aspect of health and well-being being so central. It just seems really in tune with it. I think the aspect of the children being ready to learn is essential, and the attitude to learning essential. We do a lot with growth mindset, and we found, again, that it's very in tune with that. So, the curriculum seems to be very much in tune with what we're doing. How that is shared is really hard for me to say. At times, we have so many people that enquire about it, it would be nice to have the time and the facilities to be able to share it further, but we just have to do what we can.

12:10

Just following on from what Tabitha is saying, we have been learning a lot over the last seven years about implementation and about how to, as easily as possible, in a way that's less stressful for schools that are busy places, bring mindfulness training and curriculum into the school. That's why we've developed the 'Present Curriculum' out of Paws b as a different way in, because we really want it to be trickled in easily in everyday activities, not be a kind of lesson that's delivered that teachers feel is just something extra they've got to do. And the research is finding that, actually, the longer we do something in a gentle, trickle way, the more impact it will have long-term, neurologically. So, if we did six lessons quickly, it might be very enjoyable and it might be powerful at the time, and that's what we found, but if we then measure three months later, then some of the impact's gone. Whereas if we introduce a curriculum that is easy, gentle, several minutes each day through the lessons as they're already happening, and the school day as it already is, then we believe that will have a stronger impact and be more accessible for schools.

I think, also, making the profession more aware of the positives with this, and the research as well. That awareness I don't think is across the profession. It's sort of trying to get that out there as well, and the benefits for the profession, because it is very busy, and I know that a lot of teachers do suffer from stress from it, and so it's benefiting personally them. It's important that the teachers have a practice to be able to teach the children in an authentic and genuine way, rather than feel it's something that they're just picking off a shelf, because mindfulness doesn't work like that to teach the children; you've got to have it within yourself, I think, to teach it properly.

We're piloting offering training through a teacher training course in Northamptonshire. So, we're really interested in how possible it would be to have teachers as they're training being introduced to this so that they're ready then when they begin to teach and have it as part of their skill set already, as a way to support themselves.

Somebody's whispered here, 'Why Northamptonshire?' Why couldn't that happen in Wales?

It could. It could. We've been trying to have negotiations with Bangor University for a while, but they haven't picked up on it yet.

Okay. So, undoubtedly, you're of the opinion that this could form the basis of a national approach to mental health and well-being. It's a sustainable model, as you say, because it's ingrained into the way that people work, but the big challenge then is rolling out the training. That's the biggest key challenge, as well as maybe making it part of the curriculum or making it that requirement that it needs to happen.

Can I just ask a follow-up? You're not a pioneer school, we know that, but what engagement has there been from pioneer schools that are supposed to be leading on the Donaldson front in terms of the health and well-being agenda? Has there been any contact with you?

No, there hasn't been any contact. I was vice-chair for the health and well-being area of learning for a short period, but that wasn't directly about mindfulness. But, no, I haven't had anyone approach from a pioneer school.

12:15

Are they involved in it? Are they trained themselves at primary schools?

No, not as far as I'm aware, no. So, no, nothing.

Thank you, Chair. We've heard before how important a whole-school approach to mental health is. To what extent are parents and carers involved in the work that you are doing within the school? And I'd actually ask that question to all of you, including the mindfulness ambassadors.

Do you want to go first, guys—about what your parents feel and how they're involved?

My mum feels really happy that I'm learning mindfulness, because she thinks that I get over-stressed sometimes, and when I do do that I sometimes do mindfulness with my mum. She used to do yoga, I think. So, she said she knows how to do some stuff like mindfulness, but when I taught her how to do things like petal practice she didn't really know much. I think that's the difference between yoga and mindfulness—like yoga, you'd be in an awkward position at an awkward time—[Laughter.] And mindfulness is quite thoughtful, like you'd expect.

Well, my mum thinks it's great. I recommend it to her most of the time because she does get stressed. I've told her all the practices that I know, and she says it's really good for me because she knows that I get stressed. My dad—he doesn't kind of know what mindfulness is that much because I don't usually do it at his and I haven't told him about it yet. So, yes—.

I think that shows that the children do take it home. I know they do it with their siblings and parents, et cetera. We as a school do information sessions. We did a parents evening when it all started off. Now, because it's been seven years, it's such a part of the whole ethos of the school—the parents are aware. I know parents have enquired about doing practices themselves. I have a parent governor who has been very interested and is actually in the police force and is trying to introduce it for the police force as well. So, as I say, it's just part of the school now, but to start with we did make sure that there was information to the parents regarding mindfulness and the research behind it.

We've found quite a few—

We've found quite a few parents have come on to eight-week courses because they've seen the benefit for their children and so are curious for themselves. So, there has been quite a steady flow of parents from schools that have been involved coming to courses for their own experience.

What have the main barriers been to the work that you've been trying to do in the school? And how have you been able to overcome them?

I think it has to be the approach that mindfulness is done by teachers who want to do it. It can't be a forced thing. So, we've been extremely lucky in our school, because, when it was introduced, there was at least one teacher in each year group who wanted to have a mindfulness practice and then go on to teach the children. That could be a difficulty in some schools, that not everyone's buying into the idea or wanting the idea—it could be to do with lack of information or it could be that it's just not for them. We've tried to, as I say, make sure that it's part of the ethos, so even the staff in the office have got a mindfulness practice as well. Obviously, that's the first time anyone sees the school, and it's a very busy place, and they've found it beneficial. I think the barriers are making it accessible to all the teachers. We've got a situation now where one of our teachers is leaving at Christmas, and one left at the last academic year, so the sustainability, even when you've got what I would suggest is a very good model in Pen y Bryn—it's that sustainability as people go through the school as well that would need addressing.

12:20

So, this is where we’ve been looking at how to deliver training differently from how it currently happens so that we’re offering training locally so that we can build a bank, a hub, of people who are involved in this work, locally, and so that we’re not taking people a long way away to London to do training at great expense, but doing it as cheaply as we can, near home, so that they’re not disrupted in their family lives. That way, if we can offer it more cheaply for bigger numbers, then, when there is a need in a school, an interest, we can feed people into training more easily than it being a big thing, that they’ve got to be funded for expensive training that’s a way away. So, this is what we’re hoping: to find a way that we can just keep topping up the numbers of people who want to be involved, and then have a group that can support each other in an ongoing way so that teachers don’t feel isolated in schools—you know, maybe they’re the only one in the school, or in others.

We’ve often had that, where that’s been said—'I’m the only one'. And, really, the way to get this going is through senior management first and foremost. If the senior management are believing in it and backing it then that helps the teachers who are then trained. But if there’s a lack of understanding in the senior management team then it’s harder for those teachers to proceed. We’re very lucky with John MacLennan, our headteacher, who introduced this at the outset and has been supportive all the way through, but I would suggest that that’s not always the case.

Yes. I just wanted to ask some questions to Arun and Amber, if I can. It sounds to me as though you really enjoy doing mindfulness. It doesn’t sound as though this is something that you hate as part of your school day, and you mentioned earlier that there’s a mindfulness club in the school. Is that something that you do in addition to your school lessons outside of school time?

The mindfulness clubs are at lunch time, so we can practice our mindfulness and practice for stuff like the mindfulness assembly that we’re going to do in a week and a bit.

And what else do you do after the club?

Oh yes, we have lessons about mindfulness on Wednesdays with Miss Sawyer.

And what about the younger children?

Oh yes. On occasions, we get to go to younger classes and show them mindfulness and do mindfulness practices with them. They really enjoy it, from my experience, as, when we ask them how they feel after it, they say that they always feel really calm, happy, unstressed, et cetera.

Amber, do you want to add anything?

Go on, Amber. So, you like to give support to the other children in school, as well, the younger children in particular, as some of the oldest children in the school—yes?

Because one of the things that when—. We did a survey of young people across Wales and one of the things that they said was that they, really, sometimes, just wanted to talk to another young person rather than having to talk to a teacher or a counsellor or a school nurse. So, when they felt stressed, going to someone else in the school was easier. So, do the young children come to you separately, in addition to those lessons that you do with them, Arun and Amber?

Well, I haven't—. Because the younger children and the juniors are in different playgrounds, I haven't seen the infants come to me, but I've seen a year 4 come to me and ask me to do a mindfulness practice with them.

12:25

That's very good. And that's because they know you're a mindfulness ambassador and you can help them if they're feeling stressed out or—. Everybody in the school knows who the mindfulness ambassadors are, do they?

Yes, I think so.

Okay, and what about you, Amber? Do any of the younger girls, perhaps, come and speak to you about things, or friends, or siblings?

Some of my friends, they come to me and they ask me, 'Amber, can we come to a mindfulness club?' And I was like, 'Yes, anybody is welcome.' Then they said, 'Is it okay if we can do a practice just before we go in?' because they're a little bit nervous, because they're not sure what it's going to be like. So, I just say, 'Oh, yes, I'll run through it with you.' So, they do a practice.

And how many people attend the mindfulness club, Amber? Do you get lots of people there?

Sometimes there are about 15, and then, sometimes, when the year 3s and 4s come, there are about 25.

Okay. And different people come sometimes, do they? So, some people use it as a drop-in, and some people go every week, I assume.

Mindfulness obviously means a lot to you, but I wanted to ask Arun and Amber what else do you think would help you deal with stress and worry in school. Secondary schools often have somebody who's called a counsellor, who will be there to talk to children. Do you think it would be good to have a counsellor, someone to talk to, in the primary school?

Yes. Well, I think we already have them, because we have school ambassadors, who people can talk to. But I don't think many people, if they're worried, talk to school ambassadors about their worries, because we haven't got special people who are supposed to be told about problems and be able to fix them, but, if there was something like that, I think lots of younger children especially would benefit, because they might be quite nervous going to teachers who may not understand. Because you may need someone who is a child like you are.

So, you think if you could talk to another child, that's the most important thing.

I think the same as Arun. Yes, I agree with Arun.

We had the children's commissioner in to speak to us last week, and she said that it was really important, in designing things in schools to help children feel better about themselves, to ask the children for what should be in those programmes. What do you think and what more would you like to be done to help children have a good sense of well-being at school, both at your primary school, but also, perhaps, thinking ahead to when you go up to secondary school?

Maybe if mindfulness were on a bigger scale, like maybe a whole assembly, maybe then people could realise that it's quite good, because some people don't know how mindfulness can really benefit you. They just think it's just something that you can just do, like it can't do anything, but what it can do is lots of stuff.

Could I perhaps ask those responsible—the idea about having a whole school assembly about mindfulness, is that something you've considered and might look at taking forward, perhaps advertising—

12:30

Yes, we have done it in previous years with the ambassadors, and the ambassadors are due to do an assembly next week. So, they try and do that at least once a year, that it's a whole assembly.

I think it might be relevant to say here that one of the things that children are really good at doing, which I've been hearing about from Tabs for years, is choosing when a practice happens in the classroom So, that's not teacher-led, mostly. It's mostly the children saying, 'I'd like a practice now', whether it's a rehearsal happening for the school play, or if it's a very noisy environment for a while, or people are tired, or whatever's going on, they will be able to ask for a practice at that point. So, it's always been very child-led in the classroom.

Yes, definitely.

I just wanted to ask one final question, if I can, to Tabitha and Sarah. Obviously, you've developed some tools, some curriculum tools, to be able to use in the classroom for older kids with the Paws b programme and with the present for the younger children. To what extent are those Donaldson-like, if you like, in terms of reaching into other parts of the educational curriculum and supporting them? You mentioned, Tabitha, for example, that there's a clear synergy with biology. You're looking at the brain, for example. Are there any other links that might be useful for us to think about?

Yes. There are four purposes of the curriculum, so: the ambitious, capable learners; informed, ethical citizens; healthy, confident individuals; and enterprising, creative learners. Those four purposes do cross over, because what I was saying about the growth mindset before, that certainly comes into the ambitious, capable learners—that they're actually ready to learn and understand how to learn. There's a lot of metacognition that's involved with the mindfulness as well. So, yes, as you say, the areas of learning, with the science and technology that comes under that with the brain, and the health and well-being area of learning obviously covers that because of being aware of their body, and also their mental state. So, there are lots of areas I can see that it fits into.

I know that there was the wider dimension of the report that was done before the new strand for the areas of learning, and they actually did specify mindfulness. Also, with an Estyn document that's recently come out about different evidence that would be seen under health and well-being that they'd recognise, again, mindfulness was mentioned. So it seems to be that it all tallies together. It's almost like it's joining the dots.

The newer curriculum, the present curriculum that we've developed, also intentionally brings mindfulness into other lessons. So there was a year 1 class who were talking together and listening to each other mindfully, to hear about people's experience of learning maths and what they felt they were good at and what they found challenging. So, it's kind of bringing them together rather than it being a mindfulness lesson, using some of what they've learned.

So, it's not adding further pressure on the curriculum as such. It's embedded within, yes? Okay. Thank you.

We've come to the end of our time, so can I thank you all for joining us from the Colwyn Bay office? We very much appreciate it, and a very special thank you to Arun and Amber, who I think everybody will agree have been absolutely wonderful mindfulness ambassadors. [Applause.] Thank you very much. We're going to send you a note of what you've all said today so that you can check that we've written it down correctly. Okay, thank you very much.

6. Cynnig o dan Reol Sefydlog 17.42(ix) i benderfynu gwahardd y cyhoedd o'r cyfarfod ar gyfer eitem 7
6. Motion under Standing Order 17.42(ix) to resolve to exclude the public from the meeting for Item 7

Cynnig:

bod y pwyllgor yn penderfynu gwahardd y cyhoedd o'r cyfarfod ar gyfer eitem 7 yn unol â Rheol Sefydlog 17.42(vi).

Motion:

that the committee resolves to exclude the public from the meeting for item 7 in accordance with Standing Order 17.42(vi).

Cynigiwyd y cynnig.

Motion moved.

Okay. Item 6, then, is a motion under Standing Order 17.42 to resolve to exclude the public. Are Members content? We will go back into public at 1.30 p.m. to take evidence from the Minister for Children and Social Care on Flying Start. Don't look surprised, Hefin. [Laughter.]

Derbyniwyd y cynnig.

Daeth rhan gyhoeddus y cyfarfod i ben am 12:35.

Motion agreed.

The public part of the meeting ended at 12:35.

13:30

Ailymgynullodd y pwyllgor yn gyhoeddus am 13:32.

The committee reconvened in public at 13:32.

8. Ymchwiliad i Dechrau'n Deg: allgymorth - Sesiwn dystiolaeth 4
8. Inquiry into Flying Start: outreach - Evidence session 4

Good afternoon. Can I welcome everybody back to the Children, Young People and Education Committee? Item 8 today is the fourth evidence session for our inquiry into Flying Start outreach. Members will note that following the budget session last week, the Minister agreed to provide some additional information ahead of this evidence session, and this has been e-mailed to Members and is a supplementary paper pack.

I'm very pleased to welcome Huw Irranca-Davies AM, Minister for Children and Social Care; Karen Cornish, deputy director, children and families division; Richard Thurston, education and skills research [correction: deputy chief social research officer, Welsh Government]; and Joseph Wilton, who is a social researcher at Welsh Government. So, thank you all for attending, and if you're happy, we'll go straight into questions. And I've got questions from Hefin David first.

I'd like to pick up, Minister, on where we left off here in the Assembly Chamber with regard to Flying Start outreach and some of the issues I raised with you there, and the importance of outreach. Have you done an evaluation on the impact of outreach work, and is there statistical evidence to suggest how successful or otherwise it's been?

We haven't done, Hefin, a specific piece of work on outreach itself, and as you know, in some of the areas where outreach is provided, it applies differently on the ground. Some areas do slightly more than others in different ways—they use it quite flexibly. In fact, we're extending some of the flexibility at the moment. But, partly because of that, we don't do an evaluation specifically on outreach at the moment. However, it is evaluated as part of the wider Flying Start programme. The other aspect is that we are going to be taking forward a broad desk review of everything we know about Flying Start, including the outreach elements. So, I've commissioned my officials to take that piece of work forward, and it's very broad—it's on every aspect we know, including flexibility, with outreach included, but not specifically on that element.

13:35

You know that I was interested in outreach because of the children's commissioner's view on universal childcare for the benefit of the child as well as the parent. We heard evidence from people—from practitioners in different local authority areas—who said that outreach is actually quite limited, in some areas just to two to five children.

Yes, it can vary. I've seen quite a lot of outreach, both in my own area and elsewhere. I've seen the way it's been used very intelligently, including, by the way, within the previous constraints on it, because there was limited flexibility to actually use outreach before. But even there, it's been used very well with families and children outside of the areas, but, yes, in relatively small numbers.

But that's exactly why the demand from local authorities and others on the ground, including those front-line professionals involved in this—. It's in response to them that we've actually said, 'We can give you additional flexibility, but we want to monitor how that's used.' It's up to them how they use it and it could be quite different. It could be quite different in Cardiff compared to Bridgend or elsewhere—it could be quite different, but that's the strength of it.

But then we do actually need to ask them to keep us in the loop of how effective that has been, but it isn't—. Outreach, a bit like the rest of Flying Start, is not a question of flicking—and I know that the committee understands this—one trigger and saying, 'Well, that health visit relates to this outcome here, or that language or communication support links to this development of the child.' We've got to give the flexibility. We've got to evaluate it in the whole, but that flexibility now is in response to what they're asking us for—to do more.

So, does that flexibility mean fuzzy boundary areas for outreach as well or would those boundary areas remain?

Well, it is quite interesting at the moment, what we're doing, because the demand has come from the ground to say—. One of the big criticisms, Hefin, as you know, and as you've quite rightly pointed out before is: you get to these geographic boundaries, and it hasn't been quite a cliff edge because there has been flexibility there before, but it's been in relatively small numbers for flexibility—small numbers of individual children or families that the support can be done.

The intervention can be done in different ways. It could be based on all four pillars of the Flying Start interventions for the outreach as well, or it could be that it's the health visitor who is the most important. But it's directly in response to that request, in order to make it a softer edge, in a sense, to those geographic boundaries—because there's a recognition that outside of those specific geographic areas, there are other families and children who actually need support—that we've done this. But we need to keep evaluating what the effect of that is because there is that question of value for money. Of course, Flying Start and Flying Start outreach aren't the only games in town. There is also Families First and the Public Health Wales approach as well.

And we'll come on to the funding issue in a minute. Just one more question, with your permission, Chair. With regard to the children's commissioner's report, we interrogate that in detail. Have you had dialogue now since I asked you in the Chamber, I think, two weeks ago, with the children's commissioner about these issues?

No, because I'm meeting the children's commissioner—. I think it's in my diary for next week.

Right. So, you've not met the children's commissioner yet.

I haven't met her yet. We've corresponded on various issues, but not on this. But the meeting has already been scheduled, and this will, just to reassure you, be one of the ones—

Minister, you mentioned the different range of outreach work that there is across Wales, and you mentioned Cardiff—my local authority—and the specific targeted work there that's being done with homeless families and Gypsies and Travellers. I know the Gypsy and Traveller provision well. I just wondered: had there been any thought about doing developments in a regional way rather than a local authority way? I'm just thinking about the way everything is going in a regional way. I just wondered whether there had been any thoughts about that sort of development.

We're not of a closed mind on this. We're not moving to that at this moment in time, but the very fact that part of the requests that we're having from the ground is for more flexibility, we also need to make sure in that that we're trying to, in a live way, disseminate what is working well in one area and what could be transferred easily to another area, and also, I have to say, where possible, that efficiencies in terms of value for money of the programme can be delivered.

It is certainly a theme in other areas of Government thinking that a regional approach can work, but not necessarily to mandate people—because you've exactly highlighted the thing. The situation in Cardiff is that some of the very innovative uses that they've made of this might be wholly different from 5 miles up the road, but there will be commonalities. So, for example, within the four pillars that comprise Flying Start, are there very effective standard combinations that work for certain types of family situations? Is there something that we know about not only the frequency of the health visiting, but what's actually given out as part of that health visit as well that goes beyond the health visit side but is into the wider family support, the identification of language interventions or communication interventions?

So, there might well be some scope for regional working. We are not moving to that right now, but we're open, I have to say, to listen to the experience of families that have been involved in this, and to front-line professionals and the people who deliver this programme on the ground. We wouldn't rule it out, but we're not going to force a mandate of a regional footprint on them and say that you have to do all the same, because the benefit of this programme is the flexibility in the way it accommodates local needs.

13:40

Thank you. I wanted to go on to the funding issue now. The funding level for outreach activities has, up to now, been set at 2.5 per cent of the uplift from 2012 funding levels. Now, could the Minister confirm and elaborate on his evidence, which took place during last week's scrutiny, in the draft budget session last week—when you announced a change in the expected allocation for outreach funding to 5 per cent of the overall Flying Start budget? So, could you elaborate on what that means and go into some more detail about that?

I'm happy to, Julie. What I said to the committee last week I can confirm. To clarify, it's quite a significant increase, because, whereas previously the 2.5 per cent, as you rightly identified, had only been related to the uplift in the programme, this is actually of the overall budget. And it is, I have to emphasise again, directly in response to what we are being asked for as well from the front line. This isn't something where we've thought, 'Well, this is a great idea; we're going to drive some flexibility and innovation'. It's because they're saying to us, 'Because of the sorts of programmes you're talking about, we need some additional flexibility in terms of outreach, but also in how we can tailor-make the programme as well in terms of that outreach.'

So, it's an actual increase of £2.84 million. Now, previously, the spend on the 2.5 per cent of the uplift equated to approximately £0.96 million. So, it's an increase of £2.84 million. That, we think, should give ample opportunity for those who have requested to use it. But I should say as well that it's 'up to'. So, some of them might choose not to use it, and here's one of the challenges and the difficulties for the committee, as well as for us, and I'm glad you're undertaking this inquiry. It's not to say they will have it. Not all have said, 'We will use the whole of it', but it gives them the ability up to 5 per cent, and then we, as part of our review of it, will see how effective that flexibility has been.

But the raise in this budget is in response to what you have received.

I mean—the need, or the demand, is there from them to do this.

It's not targeted on a demand of—. It's not that local authorities or others have come to us and said, 'We've identified 12 children in this area, five children in this area, that we can really use this for'. It's actually in response to them saying, 'We've identified that there is a need out there for additional outreach work and outreach support'. It may be using all the aspects of the existing Flying Start programme, it may be elements of it targeted at particular families in particular circumstances, but they've said that this would be the appropriate flexibility at this moment in time to allow them to innovate in that way.

Now, that's not to say, Julie—I would say to the committee—that, at some point in the future, we wouldn't say, 'We've learned from that and that was actually hugely effective and we might want to tailor it again', because part of the whole evaluation of this programme, the outreach element as well as the wider thing, is: what is working, what's changing, what do we now have new knowledge of? And we're doing lots of evaluation here, and have been previously. We might choose to look at it again and say, 'Well, we might do something slightly different'.

You mentioned the regional approach there. Well, this sort of slight flexing at the boundaries of Flying Start is indicative of a will from us to say that we recognise that, based on local assessment of needs, you can probably devise the appropriate solutions locally with some more flexibility. It might well be that we, at some point, want to say to people, 'Well, we can actually see that there are common things that work across the piece now, based on our pilot areas, so we'd like to see some commonality in approach as well.' It works both ways on this. It's learning: evaluate, learn, keep the loop going.

13:45

Just to clarify that the uplift is to 5 per cent of the current allocated budget. So, it's not further budget; it's within the current allocation.

Thank you. Welsh Government guidance requires local authorities to set out in their delivery plans how outreach funding will be allocated and managed. So, what financially is the expectation for local authority outreach spend? How will that follow through, and how will you monitor it?

The first part of my answer is going to be frustrating to the committee, but it's perhaps understandable in terms of what I said before. It's not a programme that works simply on a local authority saying, 'We've identified 12 families', or whatever. What they've asked for is additional flexibility and we've come to this amount of flexibility for now. So, we cannot say definitively right now what it's going to be used for, what elements of the Flying Start programme will be used and for how many families, but this is the appropriate amount that we've been asked for in terms of flexibility.

So, as such, we cannot set a figure on how much of the 5 per cent each area of the pilot areas will use, but it's there within the flexibility. What we will be able to do, however, subsequently, is to look at what has been spent and to evaluate, as part of the overall evaluation of Flying Start, what the outcomes have been, how many interventions there are, how many health interventions, how many educational interventions, et cetera, et cetera, how many in those areas, as a result of this flexibility in the outreach area, have taken up the opportunities of childcare, et cetera—but we can't do it in advance because, we've given them the flexibility to determine it themselves.

Can I add as well—? I think it's important, as part of the review that we're undertaking, that we look at how to monitor and evaluate in collaboration with local authorities, so that we do this as a joint exercise, rather than a top-down-type evaluation, so that there's much more inclusivity in thinking about what data is available, how we analyse that, how we can learn from that at a national level and at a local level as well.

Right. And do you anticipate that there will be any less emphasis or any less money for the area-based schemes—you know, the geographical-based Flying Start? If a bigger amount is going on the outreach, does that mean that there'll be less emphasis on the geographical?

It has, in effect, given—I'm not sure if you or Hefin used the phrase—a slightly fuzzy boundary to it. So, by implication, if a local authority decides to actually take the whole 5 per cent and allocate it towards outreach work, then clearly there would be a slight impact on those, but that's a good decision for those local front-end providers to make within that area. What we do know is that, overall, with the allocation of funding that we've given out this year again to Flying Start overall, we're on target to what our targets were in terms of the number of children assisted—around about 36,000. We remain on target and we'll keep on target with this. So, whilst it makes the edges a little bit fuzzy, it won't diminish the number of children, and in fact, this is probably—

It depends on the local needs and how they tailor it. Because if, for example, they decide within the approach they take to this that what they need is—. It may well be that they say that they've got a particular issue, let's say, for example, as you were saying, with the Traveller community. That doesn't need three or four interventions; it needs one or two specific ones. That may actually mean that there's greater value for money delivered because it goes further—the right interventions for the right family situation. So, this really has to be to do with clever interventions and some flexibility around them. Actually, that's another thing we're quite interested in. 

The reason Flying Start came forward in the way that it did—and I know this committee is very fixed on whether there is evaluation and whether there is value for money. It didn't come out of nowhere, as the committee will know. It came from very good international examples of what works with various interventions. But, what we do know is that sometimes it doesn't take every one of those interventions in the same situation. It can be a bit more precise. So, it doesn't have to be the language and communication and the childcare. The health visitor, I have to say, is key. That long-term, embedded, more frequent is quite key to this, but not necessarily all four. So, they could stretch it further. We could end up with more children and more families having interventions as a result of this flexibility, but I can't say definitively.

13:50

No. Just for example, in my own constituency, we don't get any sort of interventions at all, really, yet there are families that are in need, and in need of this sort of intervention. So, I am hoping that this will mean that some of them will have more help. But will that mean that other areas then will get less help? That's, you know—. I can see what you're saying—that we'll have to see how it works generally.

Yes, and it is worth saying as well that this doesn't stand alone. Flying Start is our flagship programme, which does—. It's faced the criticism of it, but there's a good reason why it began, and still essentially sticks, around geographic areas. I know that you will have heard evidence that there are plenty of children who face deprivation outside those areas. But what we know is that the areas that we focus on are the areas where there is the highest density of children in deprived circumstances. That shouldn't mean, however, Julie, that it stands on its own. So, it's what do we do then with Families First and with the children's zones approach. What do we do with the health interventions beyond that as well, in terms of health visitors? In fact that's probably an area that we need to think about: how we make it a bit more seamless as time goes by.

Fine. My last question, then: how much consultation did you have with people involved with Flying Start when you made this change in the budget?

There was extensive discussion with Flying Start co-ordinators—the ones who are on the front line and probably all of us have met. I don't know whether you want to add the extent of that discussion. I know they went on.

So far, I have met with 21 out of 22 local authorities. I have met with the co-ordinators and had discussions. We also have regular quarterly meetings with all of the Flying Start co-ordinators. During those meetings, most raised the issue of additional funding flexibility, and that's why we have responded in the way that we have.

Just to come back to your other point about monitoring, obviously, each area has to produce returns to the Welsh Government, and we look at those on a regular basis. But, also, we have account managers who are in regular contact with every local authority, both in terms of Flying Start and Families First, to enable those discussions about how well the programme is being implemented, where there are any issues, and the sorts of things that we can then do to support the programmes in each area.   

In terms of the reach of Flying Start, Chair, as an example of how communities may be reached or not, in my constituency of Newport East, I have got two social housing estates—Moorland Park and Broadmead—right next to each other. Moorland Park is within Flying Start; Broadmead isn't. In Moorland Park, there is a Communities First centre where they have Flying Start. I went along there and I was told that they were underutilised. So, the staff that they had—the capacity that they had there—could receive more children, and they were very frustrated that Broadmead was on their doorstep and they weren't able to take children and help families from that estate. Is that a situation that you recognise, and is anything in hand to address those issues?

I do recognise it. In fact, if I track back three or four years ago, when I was formerly not in this place but was a Member of Parliament, that's exactly the thing I was raising on the ground in my own area, along with my Assembly Member, Janice Gregory, at the time, as some of you will remember. But, what I've noticed is that it's changed even in these last few years. The local Flying Start co-ordinator in my area has used some of the additional flexibility, and used some of the existing flexibility within the moneys that were currently available in the last couple of years, in order to reach out to families that were beyond the area and to offer them childcare and other interventions. Now, it can be done, but what we were increasingly being told by Flying Start co-ordinators and local authorities was that there was insufficient flexibility to do that. So, we haven't let loose the reins and said, 'You do what you want; we're breaking down the geographic focus entirely', because we think that is important. We know that, in times when we are constrained in funding terms, where we would love to—. Frankly, in an ideal world, I genuinely would—I would take the Flying Start approach and I would just roll it out everywhere. We don't have the money to do that. But what we are doing is adding a bit more flexibility. So, yes, that's the sort of thing where those discussions with front-line professionals should be able to take place and say, 'Well, we've got families outside of the area. Can we actually use what's been done in that Flying Start provision and that geographic boundary, and provide for them the health visiting, the provision of two or three hours per day?', et cetera, et cetera. It won't all happen overnight, by the way, because this is an element of flexibility.

13:55

You did tell us last week that this change in the funding arrangements would take place immediately. It is quite unusual to change something like that part-way through the financial year. What's the rationale for that, and what assessment have you made of any potential unintended consequences?

It was immediate, and I know it's unusual, but it wasn't unexpected. It had come from discussions that were going on, and we do not anticipate any problems with this, because local authorities and front-line providers could continue exactly as they are. But what they have now got is the ability, either immediately, in response to demand they've already identified, or over the next few weeks and months, to tailor the need to the geographic area and some of those outside as well. 

So, no, I don't think we've identified and we've not had any feedback on any anticipated unintended consequences of making that immediate decision. It was very much in response to people saying, 'If we can have it now, we'll have it now, please.'

Yes, thank you. If there was a word count of today's meeting, I think 'flexibility' would be top of the list at the moment, which is a positive. But I'm just wondering whether we're on a bit of an inevitable journey here, because it was 2.5 per cent of the uplift, and now it's 5 per cent. If we're listening to the practitioners, I'd be interested in hearing your view on the evidence we had from Public Health Wales that nearly two thirds of people who are income deprived live outside geographical areas that are labelled or defined as deprived. So, if we're serious about that flexibility, then why limit it to 5 per cent?

It's a really valid question, and I think it's because we're learning and we're evaluating as we go. We didn't start from scratch, as I say. We knew, internationally, what works, so we set the programme up as it is. It's been going now for 10 years as an entity as Flying Start. Curiously, I've got, in my area, some of the oldest and some of the newest. So, I know the outcomes. I know first hand; I've seen it happening. But what we also know is that we've got to constantly have that feedback loop. If the demand from the ground is saying, 'Flexibility', if the demand from the ground is saying, 'Well, actually, we think there are aspects of this we might be able to do together jointly across the piste and get better value for money,' we shouldn't be shutting our ears to that. I don't think it's an inevitability, because an inevitability would suggest that we can see down the line and learn lessons before we've actually got the evidence in. So, it's got to be evidence led.

I mentioned that desk review that we were doing. Even though it's a desk review, there is so much good evaluation out there, either on individual things such as Cardiff or the SAIL project, but also, 2013, the piece of peer review that was done et cetera, et cetera. We're going to go right across the piste, and we'll look at every element of it and see what direction it points in now. But we'll go with the evidence. It's not inevitable, but, at this moment in time, there is a clear direction of travel, which is more flexibility, more local ability to determine, to assess the needs of the population and then determine what interventions to get what outcomes. The problem with this, however—I have to be frank with the committee—is sometimes it is easier in other areas of policy to say, 'If you put this amount of money in and you flick this particular switch of intervention, you get this outcome.' We're looking at a child and a family's journey over a long period of years. And if we've learnt anything, curiously enough, from just over the border in England, it's, 'Don't mess about with this and then pull it away.' Keep at it, keep evaluating, and change based on front-line information coming into your loop all the time. And I would say, the colleagues I've got sitting around me and others are intimately engaged with it. This is not a Welsh Government-driven approach of, 'We now see what works. We're telling you what to do now; change direction.' This is real—I hate the word, but it is that co-production. How do we make this better, get better value for money and get the better outcomes from people on the front line? 

14:00

Thank you. So, there's flexibility in terms of funding and where you can spend the money, but what about flexibility in terms of what the provision is. We know the basic elements of the programme. Is there the possibility of moving to a mixed model where some aspects can be geographically located, and others, maybe, given a free hand? Instead of just, you know—

There's a hint of that in what we're doing now with the flexibility.

I would add to that, that where there is innovation in that regard, we really do need to evaluate that carefully so that we can learn from that, and not just in an anecdotal way, and that that innovation should be based on the firm basis of Flying Start to date. It should also be evidence based, and we know that the evidence, internationally, is being built upon and changing over time and we should be looking at that. But that's not just a question for Welsh Government; it's a question for practitioners to be evidence based in how they develop those services as well. That's the sort of assurance that I think we'd like to have.

Yes, but within that, sort of, dynamic relationship where, actually, minds are open to new ideas and—. 

The challenge of this way of working, quite frankly, is that it requires an immense amount of genuine, active, constant, live-time collaboration and trust, and we've got that—we've got that. It is the absolute antithesis of the top-down 'we've lifted a programme off the shelf from somewhere, we've seen it in Sweden or Norway or whatever'.  Actually, we're probably now, in the way that we're doing this, leading the way. Even within the constraints that we have, we're leading the way.

I just wanted to pick up on one thing you said at the outset because I know this evidence has been put in front of you: it is right that there are many, many children and families living in deprivation outside, but the geographic focus of this that remains as part of it at this moment is based on the fact that we do know—and we don't dispute the figures that you've heard elsewhere, by the way—that whilst, in 2015, 25 per cent of children in non-Flying Start areas—non-Flying Start—were in deprivation, in the Flying Start areas in these geographic boundaries 53 per cent of children are in deprivation. So, that's why we're still, at this moment, sticking to the geographic area, but with more flexibility, and we learn as we go, but it shouldn't be seen in isolation, and, in fact, some of the pieces of work that we're doing is to look at how we actually integrate that early years provision more in order that it's not simply Flying Start and it's not the only game in town; it's the other interventions that go outside that.

Well, that's where I was going to go next because I was wondering about that interrelationship between, for example, the new childcare offer and how we avoid a situation where there's overlap or that, you know, it's mutually beneficial.

Yes. It's got a challenge—it has got a challenge without a doubt—and the two policies are slightly different. However, the Flying Start childcare, as you know, is a particular type and is focused on two-year-olds; the childcare offer is three to four-year-olds. From discussions with local authorities, we're quite confident that the interplay between the two can be managed. There is an interesting discussion, though, further on down the line as to this seamlessness, but currently I don't think we anticipate any difficulty in the two being managed alongside each other by the same partners who are actually engaging with this as well.

It's probably worth mentioning at this point that we're actually starting a piece of work with two PSBs to consider approaches to an integrated early years system, so actually looking at that age range pre birth to seven, which is what we've identified as the early years, and looking at not just the programmes but actually everything that's happening during that period of time and considering how that could work better across the whole system. It's at very, very early stages. We are still just developing that, but I think that's something that, in due course, we will be able to talk to you more about.

We're very mindful of the research evidence that shows that once you've invested in the early years, if you don't continue that investment subsequently, obviously—this is supported by research—you lose that initial investment and, more importantly, the children involved don't achieve as well as they might have done because of that initial investment. So, tracking the trajectories of children from the early years all the way through their experience of childcare and then of the foundation phase is really important to what we're thinking about, and that's part of the conversation with the PSBs involved in the early work.

14:05

And out of interest, one of those will be in the Valleys, south Wales, and one of them is in north Wales, and they're contrasting areas as well so that we can learn more.

Minister, are you sure you're getting value for money from Flying Start?

Yes we are, and it isn't purely on—. As my colleague has mentioned, we can't rely purely on an anecdote and what we see first hand or even the qualitative evidence given by parents and children who've been through this programme, although that is important in itself, I have to say—the first-hand evidence. But what we do know is that when we peer backwards down the telescope and we look at what we found from the 2013 peer review study, which, for example, showed that there was no significant difference between the educational outcomes of children within Flying Start and non-Flying Start areas, well, you could say, 'That's a failure'. When you look at the families and the children that they are intervening on, the very fact that there is no significant difference in the Flying Start areas in areas of high deprivation between those educational outcomes, their propensity to turn up at school, to attend school, the identification early on—earlier than normal—of special educational needs and so on—that is a measure of outcome as well. But it's not perfect. We could add a range of things, and what we're doing with SAIL at the moment to identify how individual elements of Flying Start contribute as well and evaluate that.

But can we do an actual specific evaluation that says, 'For every pound we put in, it has this effect, this monetary effect on a child'? No. Firstly because we don't have the longitudinal data to do it; secondly, because of the complexity of the interventions and the possible outcomes, how do you know that any £1 spent in that area has this definitive outcome here on that family?

In addition to that, we do know from longitudinal studies of similar programmes to Flying Start, particularly from the US, although with the caveat that it's difficult to compare across different cultures and countries, that similar programmes, when the participants in those programmes get to be teenagers and get to be of employable age and so on—up until into their 30s now that research about the Perry Preschool and Head Start programmes in the US—. We know from that that there are serious cost-benefit savings to the rest of society in terms of reduced offending, better employment rates and so on. So, we know generally that the evidence is very supportive in the longer term, but we need to look at that ourselves from our experience. And, of course, we won't find that out for the first cohort of Flying Start children from 10 years ago—they're not going to be achieving their GCSEs for a few more years and then entering the labour market and so on. So, that's something that we're looking at—whether or not we can plan for that evaluation later. But, at the moment, we don't have that, of course.

You give a very positive assessment of the quite extensive academic literature in the US on Head Start. I mean, do you recognise that not all studies backed up quite the positive assessment that you gave and also just the extent of the spending required to get relatively small, but statistically significant, improvements in outcome on most of the Head Start studies in the US?

Yes, absolutely, and there are differences in the nature of those programmes and the targeted participants—culturally and politically very different as well, of course. But when we look at programmes closer to home—and the Sure Start programme in England is obviously a close example—then we are looking to learn from those studies and experiences to fine-tune what we're doing here to make sure that the benefits that we are observing can be enhanced and improved upon.

But is Sure Start really a very comparable programme to Head Start? I mean, Head Start has some pretty specific elements of what happens in the programme, whereas Sure Start seems rather nearer to what Huw was talking about in terms of greater elements of discretion for local authority, and some data uncertainty as to what's actually happened and perhaps which approach is going to be tested.

14:10

Absolutely. And that means that we do have to evaluate our own work to understand that more specifically. But we have to look somewhere for that initial evidence and we did that and we constantly look at that evidence base as it’s growing. There are other studies that inform us that are close to home, including funding that we provide for the millennium cohort study, which has tracked children since 2000, and we’ve learnt a lot from that study as well.

And the SAIL programme as well should help identify those individual elements, how much they contribute. But I don’t want to mislead the committee by saying that we’ll be able to say, in the way that you do when you do a design build project of a bridge going across a river—you can absolutely see this is how you’ve delivered value for money on that bridge bill, keeping the costs under, whatever. This demands resource and it demands investment, and it’s long-term investment and it’s sustained. I think that’s very much what we’ve learnt from neighbouring programmes of Sure Start—it needs to be maintained. You should not give up confidence too early in the day; you need to keep it going, but learn as you keep it going, and you’ll want to see improvements.

One of the things that gives me surety of this is the cumulative evidence that we’re gathering now within Wales of the outcomes for children within the Flying Start areas, in terms of things like cognitive ability or more tangible ones such as those who, from a Flying Start area, are attending more regularly in schools than those outside from deprived families. That’s significant. And there’s a range of these that are accumulating. I think that’s why, with the SAIL work, with the desk research that we’re doing, with other interventions, with looking at the more integrated work we’re doing in two areas and evaluating that, we need to draw those lessons out, but it won’t be a simple spreadsheet answer—it won’t be a simple bottom-line budget one in the way that you do when you’re building a bridge; it’ll be more to do with, 'We can see outcomes improving for these children'.

Minister, the 2013 study—I take your point that if there’s no statistically significant difference between Head Start and non-Head Start areas, and the non-Head Start areas are somewhat less deprived, then we shouldn’t assess that negatively; that may be a good outcome. But why wasn’t it measured? What was the change in the Head Start areas compared to as similar as possible non-Head Start areas in 2013? Was that looked at in 2017? Are you analysing this data in the right way?

Yes. It’s a really good point. In retrospect, if you went back—. I’ll ask my colleagues to come in in a moment, but, in retrospect, one of the difficulties, originally, when we started on this 10 years ago, and elsewhere—we weren’t the only ones—was the lack of baseline identifiers that we could then— almost in that millennium project sort of thing, where you track a child. But, having said that, even if we had that baseline element, the trick is identifying which of these multiplicity of interventions, at some point, made that difference to a child’s life, or was it all of them thrown together? But do you want to turn to the original issue of the baseline, because it was an issue that we didn’t have that data to start the journey on?

So, I think, in addition to that, it’s worth saying that it was very difficult and would have been ethically interesting to have this discussion at the time of allocating Flying Start to some groups of children and not others in an experimental sort of way. That could have been considered, but it wasn’t at the time. There are other techniques that we could’ve used, that we’re considering now, hence the SAIL project, so it’s collecting the right sorts of data from practitioners, but, as the Minister says, we didn’t have that data early on, so we quickly recognised that that was an issue and are addressing that, of course, now.

In addition to that, the methods that can be undertaken to give us more confidence in the analysis that we’ve talked about may be still on the cards, but it really should be linked to innovation, now, in terms of what’s being done locally.

Can I set out two potential approaches to the Minister and ask which he prefers? And I’m nervous that you may fall between the two stools. Firstly, you could have a programme, you could compare where that programme happens to where it doesn’t and look at those changes and see whether the money is getting an improvement that’s statistically significant in areas where the programme happens. Alternatively, you can give local authorities a far greater degree of discretion about how they deliver this, but measure very carefully what it is that they're delivering, and then compare outcomes against those inputs with a multivariate regression to see which elements may be statistically significant. Which of those approaches are you aiming to achieve?

14:15

Both and all, because the way we need to evaluate this is not one or the other. There will be good, hardline, hard data, quantitative evaluation—how many children are accessing what points of intervention on this and what the outcomes will be. We should not discount the qualitative data that comes in as well. I'm an ex-university lecturer, I'm used to speaking to my students about how you combine these datasets to say what is happening with the outcomes. So, 'It's both' would be my answer. It isn't falling between two stools. All the stuff we're doing—SAIL will give us some more of the hard data points. But that doesn't discount the front-end, qualitative response we're having from families who've been involved in this for some time who tell us about the transformative effect it has on them and their children. But that goes alongside all the basket of other ones.

I think what we need to see is, actually, the usefulness of the desk research we're doing. There is so much evaluation that's being done now, and, in fact, probably at the cutting edge, in some ways, of trying to refine the way in which we do this evaluation of all the European and international models, and we learn from them, as well, by the way—what's being done internationally. But I suspect where we'll come to is that there's a basket of data and qualitative evaluation that says whether this is a success or not.

Finally from me, Chair, what degree of independent input is there into the design of those studies that will show us whether or not this programme is working to its potential and, if so, how? My nervousness is—understandably, you, as Minister, and your civil servants and those supporting the programme will want to show that that programme is a success and that the work you're doing is a good thing. I just, therefore, have a certain nervousness where, as you're going along in the project, you find certain information that suggests good impacts, and that's then what used to assess the project, rather than something that's agreed with independent academics at the beginning, 'This is the right way to assess whether it's going to work. Can you do those measurements and analysis for us on that agreed basis, and then if the money is going well, great, we'll carry on with the investment?' But, if it isn't, and some of the Sure Start analysis in England, at least in some projects, seemed to go this way, then the money was cut off. Even if you're getting good qualitative or, arguably, anecdotal evidence of positive things, you need something more rigorous than that, don't you?

Yes, I would agree. What we are doing in terms of evaluation is, to the greatest extent that we can, open and accessible as well. We engage, by the way, as well, in terms of sharing what we are learning, not only across Wales, but also with other similar programmes—they're not all the same—but internationally as well, and learn from them and their evaluation. We are working with the Administrative Data Research Centre, ADRC, Wales on analysis, using administrative datasets to explore, for example, the health outcomes of Flying Start children. So, we are engaging with others outside of the team to look at how we measure and produce that data. But in terms of peer research, peer review—

Well, the 2013 report we had professionally peer reviewed by independent academics, and that assured us of our analysis and how well we'd undertaken it, but also gave us lots of lessons for improvement, and we've talked about some of those already.

But the peer review was independent, or the report author and writing were independent.

The 2013 report was commissioned by Welsh Government, but it was with an independent research company. In those circumstances, we accept their report—we have a code for research in Welsh Government that's published on the research pages of the website that sets out how independent research should be undertaken, how it should be published and so on. So, we're firm in our commitment to publishing and being transparent about research when it's undertaken independently. Of course, we commissioned that, and we have an interest and an investment in that, but the way in which that's done has to be independent so that, as officials, we can provide Ministers with that independent advice, and it's really important to do that as part of the improvement process. As a researcher, I don't want to be advising the Minister that something isn't value for money when it is, or the other way around.

14:20

Can I come in as well, please? So, the 2017 evaluation, which I undertook as a civil servant, was done on the basis that that would be the best value for money to get the outcomes. As you say, we want to make sure it's independent, so that's why we've brought in independent academics to peer review the work that was going on. We went through the analysis together, but it was decided that, because internally in Welsh Government we had access to much more data without having to go through data sharing and data access procedures, it would be a lot faster and a lot more efficient for us to undertake the analysis internally, but then have the analysis reviewed and checked by independent academics. And that's what we did. 

And, in terms of the desk review, can I ask you'll whether you'll be publishing it, and, if so, when?

We're still in the scoping stage, but we will look at that, Chair.

And will you be able to update the committee when you have more information?

Yes, we will.

Okay, thank you. Are there any other questions from Members? Hefin.

I don't know whether this is a silly question or not, right, but let's try it anyway. One of the things, Minister, you said a couple of times was that this was cutting edge and in many ways internationally leading. Have you had any interest from other Governments who wanted to see what you've done and compare it with their practices? Any visits from committees from other countries?

I don't think we've had any—not in the two weeks that I've been in post. [Laughter.] Although, curiously, I've discussed this with the team here, because we know from our engagement and sharing of best practice internationally there's a real interest in what we're doing here, and the fact that we're sustaining it.

We are a member of the British-Irish Council early years work stream. In fact, Welsh Government chairs that work stream. They meet once or twice a year. We share information, obviously, as part of that, and meet on, as I say, a regular-ish basis to make sure that we're sharing and that we're learning from each other across the UK.

And I've signalled to my colleagues here that, based on what we're learning—and it isn't the complete picture yet, because it's constantly evolving, but, based on what we're doing and the sustained investment, we need to be doing more engagement, actually, internationally with some of the programmes that are out there, to talk about what we're doing and to share our best practice. Because whilst it is still a model that is constantly being refined—and you should; good business practice will tell you you keep that loop going and you refine and you evaluate and you refine—we've got a lot of good stuff to say here. We can see it already, in which case we should be saying to others how we do this. 

But I wish it was, in response to the committee's questions, an absolute exact science. But it is one of those combined programmes with a lot of joined-up interventions on the ground that is a mixture of science and art. Because, ultimately, you're dealing with human interventions with families as well, and that is a difficult thing to assess. Ultimately, what we're talking about is a young person, and, when they get to a certain point in their life, have they got the same opportunities as somebody else, or have they lost it along the way? That's the key here, and that's not an exact science.

Okay, thank you. Are there any other questions from Members? No. Okay.

Well, can I thank you very much, both yourself, Minister, and your officials, for attending today? We very much appreciate your time, and as usual you'll be sent a transcript to check for accuracy in due course. Thank you very much.

9. Papurau i'w nodi
9. Paper(s) to note

Item 9, then, is papers to note. Paper to note 1 is a letter from the Llywydd, an update on the youth parliament. Paper to note 2 is a letter from the Cabinet Secretary for Finance to the Chair of Finance Committee about the restructuring of the draft budget. Paper to note 3 is a letter to us from the Cabinet Secretary following our session last week. And paper to note 4 is a letter from the Royal College of General Practitioners in Wales supporting our committee's perinatal mental health report and urging that the recommendations are implemented in full. Are Members happy to note those? Thank you.

10. Cynnig o dan Reol Sefydlog 17.42(ix) a (vi) i benderfynu gwahardd y cyhoedd o weddill y cyfarfod.
10. Motion under Standing Order 17.42(ix) and (vi) to resolve to exclude the public from the meeting for the remainder of the meeting.

Cynnig:

bod y pwyllgor yn penderfynu gwahardd y cyhoedd o weddill y cyfarfod yn unol â Rheol Sefydlog 17.42(vi).

Motion:

that the committee resolves to exclude the public from the remainder of the meeting in accordance with Standing Order 17.42(vi).

Cynigiwyd y cynnig.

Motion moved.

Item 10, then. Can I propose in accordance with Standing Order 17.42 that the committee resolves to meet in private for the remainder of this meeting? Are Members content? Thank you.

Derbyniwyd y cynnig.

Daeth rhan gyhoeddus y cyfarfod i ben am 14:24.

Motion agreed.

The public part of the meeting ended at 14:24.