Yes, no problem at all. There'll be a full engagement report written off the back of this, which will be shared with committee members ahead of your next meeting, but I'll give you a really brief overview of some of the work that we did. We ran four focus groups altogether across Wales. We ran two in south Wales, which the Chair attended. We also ran two in north Wales—one up in Chester Zoo, and I strongly recommend that committee run all future sessions near a zoo—which really helped the engagement.
We worked with 24 parents altogether—20 females, four males—and what we were looking to get out of the sessions was to really understand a little bit more about young people's experience of having a child whilst in care. We also wanted to know if they felt fully supported, what the practical and emotional support was like. We wanted to know what the quality of support was like from local authorities, third sector and others, and whether they met the needs of those young people. It was a very emotive topic, as you can imagine. It was very hard for the young people to share their stories, and quite hard to listen to as well, so I thank everybody who took part.
There were three key overarching themes that came through. One quite key theme was the relationship they had with social services, which was very poor. There was a lot of anger in that room about the relationships they had with social services. A quote that came through was, 'They're not always truthful with what they say. They tell me to be honest and open, but then, on the other hand, they use everything and anything you say against you.' There was some praise for individual social workers, but on the whole, there was a lot of anger in the room about the relationship they had with social services, and that was across different authorities.
Linked into that is the assumptions, I think, that get made about these young people, and I think that came through really clearly, from social services, but also in some cases from the NHS. Another example, a quote I'll say, was, 'I had some wine in the kitchen since Christmas. The social worker found it and poured it straight down the sink and said, "If you carry on like this, you'll end up like your mum." I hadn't even opened it yet; they assumed I was a drinker, and I wasn't.' There are countless quotes that support those kinds of findings, that there are assumptions that get made straightaway about these young people.
The third theme that really struck home was the emotional trauma that some of these young people have experienced. Again, this came through really strongly. Several people mentioned the impact it had on their mental health, the mental health of the children. A quote that was really hard to hear about was, 'It's horrible, just horrible. It's hell seeing your child getting taken away from you. It makes me feel sick now even thinking about it. My mental health is horrendous.' And there was another story about one of the young mothers who became pregnant again. Because of the experience she had had previously, she was seriously contemplating whether to move forward with the pregnancy or not, and that was linked in to the previous experiences that she'd had. So, a very tough listen, to listen to these focus groups.