Sesiwn Dystiolaeth: P-04-597, ‘Diogelu dyfodol Draig Ffynci, Cynulliad Plant a Phobl Ifanc Cymru’
Evidence Session: P-04-597, ‘Protect the future of Funky Dragon, the Children and Young People’s Assembly for Wales’

[3]               William Powell: We move now to agenda item 2, which is the evidence session on the petition P-04-597, Protect the future of Funky Dragon, the Children and Young People’s Assembly for Wales. As Members will recall, this petition was submitted by Trish Jones of Funky Dragon. We first considered it back on 23 September, and it had collected 1,641 signatures. We look forward to welcoming our witnesses shortly.

[4]               Bore da. Good morning, all. Welcome to this meeting of the Petitions Committee, addressing petition P-04-597 on the future of Funky Dragon. I’d appreciate it if you’d briefly introduce yourself for the record and also to check that everything’s working correctly.

[5]               Ms Williams: Right. I’m Catriona Williams, chief executive of Children in Wales.

[6]               Mr Janes: I’m Ed Janes, development officer for participation with Children in Wales.

[7]               Ms Hill: And I’m Lynne Hill, one of the policy directors at Children in Wales.

[8]               William Powell: Excellent. Well, you’re all most welcome. My colleague Joyce Watson is going to kick off straight away with questions, if that’s in order. Joyce.

[9]               Joyce Watson: Thank you. Good morning, all. I want to ask questions around the independent peer-led platform for children and young people and whether you agree, because we’ve had evidence from Funky Dragon, where they’ve said, and I quote, that,

[10]           ‘Wales has become the only country in Europe not to have an independent youth parliament.’

[11]           Ms Williams: Right. I think one of the issues, really, is around what is an independent youth parliament. If it’s an elected body from young people that is representative across Wales, and also if the governance of the organisation is young-people governed—I’m very familiar with Funky Dragon; I actually helped to write the constitution many years ago, in the beginning, and we’ve been involved throughout—then Wales hasn’t got that independent body that is governed by young people and is an elected body.

[12]           Joyce Watson: Okay. So, I want to explore, then, whether Children in Wales’s work with children and young people is intended to be an independent, youth-led, national platform for children and young people.

[13]           Ms Williams: Right. The situation for Children in Wales was that, for many years, we were core funded to do all of our activity, which is the sort of national body to put forward the voices of the children and families sector, and, as the years have gone by, obviously, children and young people’s voices have been part of that—the participation agenda in Wales has developed hugely over the past 20 years, really—and so, as far as we’re concerned, we bid to the only grant scheme that was available to us to bid to, which was the children and families delivery grant scheme. And within that, at the time we bid, I was quite hopeful that we could do a partnership, with Funky Dragon as a partner, but fully understanding that each organisation is very independent. And the philosophy of a peer-led organisation, I am familiar with that, because I did take it to the Charity Commission myself, all those years ago. A young-people-led body couldn’t possibly be what we were, because we have trustees who are from the professional sector, as well as opportunities for young people, but we’re not, you know, definitely young-people governed, because a parliament and, say, 16 to 25-year-olds running an organisation is different. I’m co-chair of Voices from Care with young people, and that structure is young people led, because, at the annual general meeting, the young people have all the power.

[14]           Joyce Watson: So, do you think—and this is the final question from me—that there is a need for a platform, as Funky Dragon has stated?

[15]           Ms Williams: Where we’re at the moment is that the young people from Funky Dragon have asked to meet with us, and they’ve had a very difficult time, let’s face it, over the past few months. We were keen, because, across Wales, as I say, the participation agenda has developed so much that we very much welcome the approach. We want to talk. I think, because Wales is a small country, we need to all work together to get something that is going to work, because, I think, when Funky Dragon started, there was no division between Assembly and Government, and I think that is one of the things that we now—. It’s a good time to have a look at how we work together, because, in some specific instances, if you’ve got a very minority vulnerable group that needs a lot of support to give their voices, it’s inevitable—and perhaps Lynne could mention young carers—that it’s only a smallish group that would be consulted by various bodies.

[16]           I think the point that we’re at is: we know what we bid for, we’re giving the support to both the sector, the professionals—. We’ve got four strands in our work: the voice of young people; support to professionals to be able to properly engage young people, in other words the skills of how to do it; then we’ve got the sector’s voice, in terms of the workers; and then we’ve got the representation of what everybody’s saying into Government. So, there are four bits to our bid, and so, for instance, if there’s an inquiry into young carers, that group of young carers—. We’ve got over 200 organisational members in touch with children, and they may be asked by the Assembly to give evidence, they may be asked by local government to give evidence and they may be asked by Welsh Government to give evidence. So, I think it’s timely for us to be coming together with other groups to actually look at what’s best now.

[17]           William Powell: We’re grateful for that. Would you like to contribute at this point, Ms Hill?

[18]           Ms Hill: I can certainly give you an example of how we work with particular groups like young carers. We’ve been doing that work for probably the past eight to nine years now, in that we work with the workers on a regular basis and then we’ve been very fortunate that Welsh Government have supported opportunities to enable young carers to come together, to identify what the issues are for them as a group and to work through how they would want to present those issues. Over the years, we’ve had regular meetings with Gwenda Thomas, when she was Deputy Minister for health and social services, and they went to meet with her and presented the work that they’d worked up. We were always very clear that what they talked about were the issues for young carers, not, ‘This is my story’. It was about saying, ‘This is a piece of work that we’ve done across Wales. We’ve brought together all these views and these are the key issues for us’.

[19]           I have to say, at the last meeting, one of the young carers raised issues about local pharmacies and having challenges in collecting medication, which has been a long-standing issue for young carers. Understandably, pharmacists want to be careful who they give it to, but it does cause real problems for some families. As a result of that meeting, Welsh Government officials then worked with the royal college of pharmacists to sort of begin to tease out an agreement, which was really, really great for the young carers, and they actually got a letter back from the Deputy Minister saying that.

[20]           So, there’s a whole process for a relatively small, although a growing, number of young people who care. There’s a whole process there about supporting that voice through. We’ve also done pieces of work like producing videos for them, or leaflets for them, which are still being used. They were very heavily promoted through the carers strategy, saying, ‘These are young carers’ issues; they mirror the needs of adult carers, and these are where their particular needs are different’. So, that’s just an example of the work we do.

[21]           William Powell: That’s helpful. Thank you. Russell George.

[22]           Russell George: Thank you. Good morning. The Minister’s view is that funding awarded to Children in Wales is to fund a national participation model. That’s his view. Is that your view as well?

[23]           Ms Williams: It is a national participation model. It’s not an assembly in terms of the model that Funky Dragon was based on. At the time we bid, we thought that Funky Dragon was still going to be there. I think Lynne has demonstrated a very small group. Ed could give examples of more universal engagement. So, in terms of Government, and influencing Government in particular, although we are having discussions with the Assembly about what the young people’s youth engagement in the Assembly is doing, because there will be times when we work together, ours is a national participation model, but it’s not an organisation, and I think that’s the difference. I don’t know, Ed, if you want to say—

09:15

[24]           Mr Janes: Yes. I think, because you have the Funky Dragon model of participation—the kind of youth Assembly, which is a fantastic model of participation—the model that we have is also a model that we believe will work and that is national, but it is set out in a different way. So, the model that we have focuses on Children in Wales doing work in schools, Children in Wales doing work in empowering the local forum work that’s being done by forums—some of the fantastic work that’s being done already in the local youth forums and in national youth organisations, as well as with groups like young carers and young disabled people that we’ve done before, and looked-after children as well. Then, it is using that and, kind of, empowering that work and recognising that work by feeding it into the Welsh Government and then backing that up with the meetings that we want to be arranged with Ministers. So, the bid also included us running meetings between young people and Ministers each year, with the idea being that those young people would have been involved in the different priorities, locally, and then have the chance to, kind of, make sure that it’s being fed into the national manner.

[25]           Russell George: Right. What I wanted to just also clarify is that, last summer, talking about the grant funding that you had and what it was being used for, on your website, you had a statement saying,

[26]           ‘For clarification, this project is not funded to deliver a National Youth Assembly for Wales.’

[27]           I wonder if you could just talk to what was behind that statement, so we can understand that.

[28]           Ms Williams: I think it was exactly—. I think what I’ve said previously that it’s not an elected body of young people who are, sort of, being politically active, as it were, in terms of representing the nation. I mean, we have got partners, as well as our own organisation: we’ve got ProMo-Cymru, which, in terms of universal engagement of children and young people—. CLIConline has many, many hits and, for instance, we’ve just put a poverty video onto that to promote a discussion amongst, hopefully thousands, but certainly hundreds of young people, for them to be able to contribute their views there. But it isn’t—. I think, the main point is it’s not linked to democracy and representation—that’s how, as an assembly, we view it—but we are bringing together groups at national level. And also, we’ve got a model where we’ve got four regional links to the youth forums, and also we’ve got our own links to member organisations already that work with a whole range of children and young people.

[29]           So, we’re trying to get that sort of loop, for instance, with the child poverty work in Welsh Government. We’re in discussions about how we can have an ongoing relationship between children and young people and the policy makers there. So, I think the key difference is it’s not an elected body of representatives from each part of Wales. But I think that’s probably the discussion that now needs to take place, because, to be honest, the funding was hugely reduced; there wasn’t, in terms of this grant round, the funding that had previously supported both Children in Wales and Funky Dragon together: it was virtually half. So, we bid for what we could deliver and I think that’s the—. But, it is a model that contributes to national Government policy development.

[30]           Russell George: Okay. I’ve got one last question and I’m conscious that two of my colleagues want to ask questions as well, so it doesn’t need a long reply, but I was just curious to know, in your view, who is responsible for ensuring that young people in Wales are also represented at the UK Youth Parliament and also on a European level.

[31]           Ms Williams: Ed can talk to that.

[32]           Mr Janes: Thank you. So, that’s traditionally been supported by Funky Dragon. Last year, Children in Wales received funding from the Welsh Government as well as John Bercow, through the British Youth Council, to take or to accompany a group of young people from Wales specifically for last year. We’re currently in—. Well, the agreement was that it was for last year specifically, with the idea that it would then be looked at in future. We’re currently putting together a more detailed report. We’ve put together a summary, initially, and now we’re putting together a more detailed report about the event, about the opportunity, and what the young people got out of it. So, we’ve been consulting with them, we’ve been asking them, and we’re just putting that report together at the minute.

[33]           Russell George: It would be useful to have a copy of that report, wouldn’t it, Chair, for our committee, if it’s available?

[34]           Mr Janes: Yes, okay.

[35]           Russell George: Thank you.

[36]           Mr Janes: So, that includes the opportunity and what it was like, but also, bearing in mind that it was put together at quite late notice and with a specific amount of funding, we’ve also asked them to kind of comment on the opportunity, but also how they felt—you know, if they felt there could be more support and more of a process in the run-up to the event, where they could get together and have a chance to kind of discuss some of the topics and have a chance to get to know each other so that it’s more of an ongoing process rather than what we had, which was a meeting a couple of weeks before, where someone from the British Youth Council came out to introduce the work but also to talk through the security and some of the processes around it and then, two weeks later, the actual two-day trip and two-day event.

[37]           Bethan Jenkins: Sorry, can I just clarify? Are you carrying on with that work? You say you’re talking to young people now about how it worked; I’m just conscious that you say that you’re not an assembly or an elected body, so I’m just curious as to if it’s continuing and on what basis you would want to continue it, given that you’ve just explained earlier that you’re not that type of organisation.

[38]           Mr Janes: Well, that report—. Well, we very much—. That was the first time we’d done it. I led it, I very much enjoyed it, and I think we would be interested in doing it again. The report that we’re putting in will be used to decide, I guess, if Wales takes part in it this year and in the future, and whether there will be more, you know, and what the funding will enable us to do that we get for it. We have been working with participation officers and youth forums from all of the local authorities around the future of it. They are very interested in us continuing to do it. Essentially, we are waiting for a decision, but we’re also looking at ways to build it into the work that we are doing, the young Wales work, the core work, and whether the campaigns that have been taken on in the wider UK could be built into the campaigns and the priorities that we’re going to be doing in Wales. So, it’s still being worked out, basically, but the report that we’re putting in will be used to work out the best way forward.

[39]           Ms Williams: Perhaps I could just add to that: basically, it was not within the grant that we were given. I saw Funky’s evidence and they’re quite right, they hadn’t had funding before to do it, which we were. It was very much a sort of last-minute, extra piece of work, which we were very pleased to do, but, obviously with devolution as well, you know, if there’s only one of the topics that’s Wales relevant that they’re discussing, and two or three are totally to do with England policy, there is an evaluation and I believe that the funding that the Minister gave for this last round, on the basis of the report we give, that will be reviewed by Welsh Government. But, on who’s responsible, I think that’s this Parliament and Government interface, which is, I think, underlying the whole of this discussion.

[40]           William Powell: Yes. We’re very grateful for the candour of those answers. It seems to me that your organisation has been put in quite a difficult position, which is not of your making, and that you’ve obviously stepped up to the plate, particularly in the context of the international work, which obviously wasn’t within the remit. I realise that the arrangements are still at an early stage, but could you give an estimate as to how many children and young people per year will be directly involved in the participation model that you’ve outlined?

[41]           Ms Williams: Well, I’ll hand over to my colleagues. The one thing we’ll say is that we’re hoping to hit the target in terms of the electronic, social media, click online to as many thousands of youngsters in Wales as we can get engaged. And through the school work, we’re hoping to move that along. I think then it’s almost like participation isn’t one thing; there’re lots of different levels to it. We started from the position of understanding that there were quite a lot of the most vulnerable, most disadvantaged children who weren’t able to get their voice heard. And so there’s more in-depth work there. So, I don’t know if Lynne and Ed would like to add—.

[42]           Ms Hill: I think if I start off and Ed will come in as well. Certainly, at the moment, we are working with all the participation workers and the youth forums across Wales. We have established a team of workers who are making links regionally, so each participation network forum has a link to us, and we have—. I know we have meetings established with all 22. They haven’t all gone through yet, because we started that discussion actually the first week of January; we met with them and talked in great detail about the plan, and they were really on board about engaging. So, there is, first of all, an opportunity for the statutory bodies. Now, there’s a bit of a challenge in Gwynedd, because apparently Gwynedd do not have a youth forum at the moment. So, we’re looking at how we engage there, but we actually have an office based in Gwynedd and a worker based there who knows the area very well, so we will be making sure—and she also does some work around the youth service—so we’ll do that. So, we started that work.

[43]           We obviously have—. We’ve identified that we will do six pieces of work in schools. I think we want to be very clear that that doesn’t just mean six schools; that means six pieces of work around different issues, around different concerns. And that will obviously address a very wide age range, because we know that our work is actually, you know, from 0 to 25, not solely youth, although we are very aware that there’s a youth sector that feels and felt that they weren’t sure where their voices would be heard. So, we need to make sure that we’re very clear in supporting them, but we also want to be working in primary schools, looking at where younger people are. We have membership with, and very good links with, all the pre-schools, so there may be pieces of work around pre-school issues and so on. So, we need to be able to spread that sort of work.

[44]           Alongside that, as I say, we have a longstanding relationship with young carers. We have a long history of working with young disabled people, and there’s been lots of work around that. Last Saturday, we did a training event in Wrexham for young people from across north Wales to be doing a piece of training around understanding the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and knowing their rights and expressing their rights. So, we’ve got those pieces of work going on, as well as then links with our partner organisations, such as Voices, Barnardo’s, Action for Children and Tros Gynnal, so we can link with those as well.

[45]           So, in terms of numbers, the answer is ‘I don’t know’, but we estimate we will reach a wide range of people both across the age ranges and across their experiences.

[46]           William Powell: That’s very helpful. I think it’s come across loud and clear how deep your experiences of serving the needs of some minority and hard-to-reach and disadvantaged groups are, but, given that when you bid for funding last time round you weren’t aware that Funky Dragon wouldn’t be on the pitch in terms of its activities, what measures have you been able to put in place or you are intending to put in place to ensure that you are also catering for the needs of the mainstream, as well as the groups for whom you have the particular expertise?

09:30

[47]           Ms Williams: I’ll hand over to Ed in a minute, but I think there are some topics that come through from all groups—bullying, for instance, is one. And I think one of the things in our bid that we were very keen to do was to make sure that there was an impact and an outcome for children and young people through that. So, for instance, the connection between—. I mean, it’s widespread. The first children’s commissioner raised bullying as a big issue for children. It comes through from all of our groups. Either it’s hate bullying, or it’s bullying in schools or whatever. So, as a topic identified by children and young people, that’s a chunk of work that will be very universal. We have a worker who is linking with some of the forums, but she is also pulling together the workers on anti-bullying work and we’re in the policy groups in Welsh Government. So, I’ll hand over to Ed, but that’s one, like children’s mental health; there are some issues that have come through in the past from Funky Dragon, but also from our groups. Children who are hard to reach are not necessarily different in terms of the bigger issues that affect all children.

[48]           Mr Janes: I mean, I would say that all the work that’s going on in schools is going to be—. Well, unless we decide to do some work in special schools, all of the work in schools will be with mainstream children and young people. The work with the youth forums and the specialist groups: at the minute, the work we’re doing in the youth forums is to go out into each one, find out what the local issues are and that will shape the priorities for the work. So, so far, we’ve been going out and we’ve been hearing about issues such as bullying, which has come up in all of them, mental health, and rural transport as well. So, all of those ideas, again, are coming from mainstream children and young people that are in youth forums, and then, as well as that, we will look to continue what we’ve done before in terms of looked-after children, young carers and disability as well. So, we are very much catering for both. And then, as well as that, at the minute, we are developing the young Wales website for the project or for the programme of work. We are developing social media and other methods for young people that maybe aren’t in the schools and the forums and the specific groups that we work with—other ways for them to engage with the project as well. So, I think we have—you know, I’m confident that we will have—a programme of work that will bring in the universal children and young people in the mainstream, as well as the groups that we’ve maybe in the past more traditionally worked with.

[49]           William Powell: Okay. That’s reassuring. I’m conscious that my colleague, Joyce Watson, has been showing great patience before coming in. I have a final question for you for now, and that is whether you’ve given any consideration to a process of electing young people from across Wales to create some form of representative body, and also an issue that’s come up in recent days, which is whether you’ve been involved in any consultation around the impacts that flow from the recent decision by Welsh Government to radically reduce the funding available to the young farmers movement within Wales, given their particular involvement in the same area of work.

[50]           Ms Williams: I think, to answer the first question, it’s sort of repeating in a way what I said at the beginning that we think it’s timely and we have—. You know, we needed to be very sensitive to how upset a lot of the young people were in Funky Dragon. So, we’ve been in close contact with trustees there, and they now are feeling that it’s timely for us. Also, Ed and I have met with Kelly, who’s based in the Assembly, in terms of youth engagement. We think it’s timely to have a get together to really have a look at whether there is an elected gap. But what we’re doing at national level, in the interim, is building a group that is going to advise the whole of our work. Now, that’s not elected—that’s not an elected structure. I think it’s interesting because there are different levels. I mean, I’ve done a lot of European work and the European youth forum, which is the umbrella, is actually sort of quite old young people; it’s between 16 and, in some countries, it is 30-year-olds. There’s a difference, and we’re actually covering, as Lynne said, zero to 25, basically. So, we want the voices of children and young people. So, that elected model is a youth model, and so I think we feel it’s the time to talk with others.

[51]           Ed, do you want to come in?

[52]           Mr Janes: The one thing I would say is, in meeting with participation officers and youth forum workers, it’s something that they are still very interested in. We are looking at ways of even bringing together young people on a regional level, or maybe, when we hold—well, looking at potential ways of doing it. But, I guess the one thing that we know is the residential approach that was previously done by Funky Dragon isn’t something that we can really achieve, to be honest, with the funding that we have.

[53]           William Powell: Understood, yes.

[54]           Mr Janes: That doesn’t mean that we don’t like—it doesn’t mean that we don’t support the idea of, like, an Assembly approach to participation; that’s not the case at all.

[55]           William Powell: But you are just constrained financially, effectively, yes.

[56]           Ms Hill: I was going to say, I think also, what we find now is that many of the local services are also constrained financially, and I think undertaking residential work with young people takes a huge commitment from local staff, and there are often challenges around the time, the travel. It would be a challenge for us on the current project funding, but it would also be a challenge, I think, for many of our partners.

[57]           Ms Williams: And I think that sort of goes on to your second question, really, that one of the concerns we have across Wales—well, we have two concerns, actually—is the impact on children’s organisations per se, in terms of funding, but also particularly on the participation work in many organisations. Because, you know, it is a little bit of a soft target, unfortunately, at local level as well, in terms of the participation workers, to get good participation, proper, linked to the—and we haven’t mentioned the participation standards. We are working with the participation workers now to update—not to change, but to update—and get those out there. But, to actually deliver on those standards at local level, there’s got to be the capacity in the organisations—you know, the maintained and the non-maintained organisations—to be able to do the full cycle of informing, working with, listening to children and young people, feeding back, et cetera. That capacity does need to be strengthened, and we certainly have been looking at that.

[58]           William Powell: Thank you very much. Bethan Jenkins.

[59]           Bethan Jenkins: Just quickly, because I’m conscious we’ve already run out of time. When Funky Dragon came in, they said that they were concerned about the fact that the Welsh Government, rather than young people, would be identifying the issues that would go out to be discussed, and they were very concerned about that because they were wanting to set the agenda. So, I just wanted your brief response to that.

[60]           Ms Williams: Yes, I mean, I think, probably, in fairness to Funky Dragon, they would only have seen what was written down in, sort of, bold on a chart. I think the way it works really is, clearly, what we’ve been funded to do is to support good policy development in Welsh Government. But, for instance, we wouldn’t go out to children and young people, and say, ‘This is the latest consultation from Welsh Government; what do you think of it?’. It’s more a case of children and young people—and you are probably best speaking to this than me, Ed—identifying what, locally, are really issues to them, and then us—. For instance, if bullying comes up, that means that there’s something that can be taken into policy developments across Welsh Government. But, there will be some priority issues that are sort of both Welsh Government priorities—like poverty—and children and young people’s issues as well, which marry. I think part of our job is to prioritise what’s going to make the best impact—or the young people to prioritise with us.

[61]           Mr Janes: As I’ve said already, we are going to each youth forum. We’ve been to some already, as Lynne has mentioned, and there are others that we have yet to go in to and we will be doing in the next few weeks. With all of them, we’re finding out what their local issues are. Things like mental health, bullying and transport are all coming up, and they will be the basis, with the youth forum work as well as the specific groups like young carers—. Local issues will be the basis of the national priorities that we take on.

[62]           Bethan Jenkins: Okay. I’m just concerned, for the record as well, as with Funky Dragon, this will be going back to one place and not getting out—to the Welsh Government but not to anywhere else, and that’s been my criticism of Funky Dragon previously. You know, how does that go up from the youth forum to not only the Welsh Government but the wider institution of the Assembly? So, hopefully, your discussions with the Presiding Officer can lead to a wider-based input to what young people are doing. But, just quickly, because I didn’t think I was satisfied with the answer, before we end, when you did apply for the children and family grant scheme, you were clearly aware of the situation with Funky Dragon, because, obviously, you were discussing with them. I just want to understand, because I don’t think I understood fully from Funky Dragon’s response either, where the communication—if it did; I don’t want to put words into your mouth—broke down, as in why they did not then fully engage with you putting forward a plan, because, for me, as a person outside of all of this discussion, it would have made much more sense for them to have been on board at that stage so that they could have built in that representative Assembly side in conjunction with your participation side to complement each other. Now I feel that the elected side is very much on the back foot, and that’s what I think we’re all concerned about in Wales at the moment.

[63]           Ms Williams: Yes, thank you for that. I mean, I think, firstly, we’re very concerned to work closely with the Assembly, and I think Welsh Government has said that is a good idea—so, in terms of our grant, within that, working with the Presiding Officer. And also, I think it’s inevitable that the same groups of children and young people will be supported by us to give evidence in committees as well, particularly those who need more support. Our members, Barnardo’s, Action for Children, and our partners, Tros Gynnal, Voices from Care—we’ll all be supporting children and young people to give their views, and the wider results we’ll put in the public domain. Any of the universal responses to social media campaigns and so on—that will be information available to the Assembly.

[64]           I can remember clearly, you know, it was a matter of principle for the young people in Funky Dragon that they—. There was one meeting that I instigated with the chief executive of Funky Dragon, and I said, ‘Look, clearly, there’s only one project going to be funded; we should do this together’, and he said, ‘It’s a matter of principle that we are young people-led, and we don’t really want to be getting so close to an organisation.’ I have to say, in terms of Children in Wales and Funky Dragon, our relationship, long term, has been really good. One of my policy directors has been the chair. You know, it’s been a very difficult situation. But, as a matter of principle, from their point of view, they felt that their youth-led autonomy—. They might be being pushed into a merger, which, actually, wasn’t the case, but their youth-led autonomy was possibly going to be compromised.

[65]           Bethan Jenkins: But there’s nothing now at all, that’s the thing—

[66]           Ms Williams: I know, I know.

[67]           Bethan Jenkins: I mean, it’s all with the benefit of hindsight, of course, but, at the moment we do not have that national elected body for Wales, which is a massive shame really.

[68]           Ms Williams: I think, on a positive note, certainly the young people on their board—it’s still there as a sort of vestige of an organisation—. That’s where the talking is, and, I think, you know, together we’ve got quite a good opportunity. I mean, actually, one model, going on for many, many years—. Perhaps it is, you know, timely to have a look at what’s best for Wales, because we are small and we do need to work all together so that the voices of young people get into each institution.

[69]           William Powell: I think that’s a really positive note on which to end. It’s been a very useful evidence session from our perspective to gain greater insights into actually what lay behind the events of last summer and early autumn. We will provide you with a full transcript, which I think, in the context of the discussions we’ve been having, is particularly important, so that you’ve got the opportunity to check that for accuracy, and also Members, at an early future date, will have the opportunity to consider the evidence that we’ve just heard. So, thank you very much indeed for coming this morning and for your contributions. Diolch yn fawr.

09:45