1. What assessment has the Minister made of the number of NHS employees who have accessed training through Academi Wales? OQ59633

Thank you. Academi Wales delivers a range of leadership interventions to public service leaders across Wales. In 2022, total delegates numbered 2,502, of whom 1,057 were NHS staff. For the first quarter of 2023, a total of 946 delegates have participated so far, with 292 of those delegates being from the NHS.

Thank you, Minister, for your response. As you know, Academi Wales is designed to transform this country through excellence in leadership, but, due to the COVID pandemic, our public sector leaders are now faced with challenges that they've never experienced before. I'm specifically thinking about our NHS leaders and how they have to deal with an ever-increasing complexity of health needs, a shortage of healthcare professionals in many sectors and geographical areas, and an ageing population, many of whom have chronic health conditions, to name just a few. Academi Wales lists a range of leadership training focusing on health boards, coaching and management training, which are standard skill sets that leaders need. But there doesn't seem to be any specific training on dealing with the challenges to the NHS in a post-COVID era. Minister, have you challenged Academi Wales to design this type of training, and what are the Welsh Government's aspirations for training the next generation of NHS leaders? Thank you.

I'm very grateful to Joel James for this question this afternoon, and also for recognising Academi Wales as the centre of excellence that it is in terms of leadership development in Wales. So, Academi Wales does have a range of leadership interventions, including coaching, master classes, programmes and residential schools, and I'm really looking forward to the summer school in Lampeter later on this year. But I will say that NHS staff are one of the key target audiences for Academi Wales, and it does work directly with the NHS for some of its programmes, including, for example, independent members' induction training, and that's part of Academi Wales's efforts to improve and strengthen board level leadership across public services in Wales.

Academi Wales is, of course, not the only place in which NHS staff will receive training. There is a wide range of training available through the NHS itself, including professional development across a range of routes, including everything from work-based training to specialist courses. So, I think it's important to recognise that leadership within that one Welsh public service ethos is very much supported and catered for through Academi Wales, but, absolutely, the NHS has an important role to play. And, for me, it's important that those two ways of learning and ways of supporting leadership development complement each other. Thank you for the question—it's not often we get to talk about Academi Wales on the floor of the Senedd. It is one of the more joyous areas of my portfolio and a really exciting agenda.