Responding to the publication of the plan, Dr David Tuthill, Officer for Wales at the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health said:
For many years, we have campaigned for joined up thinking across the UK’s governments, including the Welsh Government, on children’s health, wellbeing and services. We’ve seen many strategies and plans from the Welsh Government that we have welcomed, such as the All Wales Breastfeeding Plan, the Healthy Child Wales programme and Healthy Weight Healthy Wales, the strategy to tackle obesity in Wales.
It is extremely positive to have a vision document that seeks to ensure Wales is the best place it can be for children and young people. However more specifically this document will now help to hold government to account for the delivery of these important programmes and will also help to identify gaps or where new thinking and further action is required.
There’s much in this document that is to be warmly welcomed and could have a huge impact on children’s lives. In particular, the focus on mental health and wellbeing through programmes such as developing a whole school approach to mental health including specialist ‘in-reach’ support is extremely important.
However, there are crucial policy areas that must be addressed in more detail, especially around children’s health services – some of which have big backlogs and waiting lists that have grown since the start of the pandemic; and what the Welsh Government will do to end child poverty in Wales, which we know is a huge driver of poor and unequal health outcomes. Including clear strategies for addressing these clear issues would go much further towards a comprehensive vision for children and young people in Wales.
It is now crucial to focus on action and delivery of the plans and strategies referenced in this document. This should include work to deliver Healthy Weight Healthy Wales to tackle childhood obesity; effective collaboration with schools and other partners to ensure that childhood vaccination rates remain at the levels we need them to be; and rollout of the whole school approach to mental health and joining up support for children and young people’s mental health – among many other things. The Children and Young People Plan will be a helpful tool for understanding progress for these important programmes.