Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:32 pm on 1 February 2022.
Mark Drakeford
Labour
1:32,
1 February 2022
Well, Llywydd, I thank Buffy Williams for those important points and that additional question. The interim report of The Lighthouse service is available, but the final evaluation report will not be available until later in this year. We look forward, of course, to seeing what that evaluation says. The basic premise of The Lighthouse model is that it is better to bring services to children rather than children have to visit multiple locations to receive services, and clearly there's a great deal to be said for that.
Picking up a model from an intensely urban part of London—five London boroughs contribute to The Lighthouse service—and simply dropping it in Wales seems unlikely to me to be the complete answer. In the interim report, Llywydd, it said that there were, on average, 29 referrals a month from the five London boroughs into that service. In Wales, the north Wales and south Wales services between them have an average of just over 19 referrals a month, which, in effect, would mean there would be a single centre for the whole of Wales, and that wouldn't deliver the basic premise of it being more convenient for young people. So, I think, as well as learning the lessons of The Lighthouse service and its success, we have to develop a hub-and-spoke model here in Wales, where there are specialist services for children in that awful position but where there are also services closer to their own homes, able to provide the sort of assistance I outlined in my original answer.
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