Thank you, Chair. Minister, just some concern that you will have heard about in terms of parents and carers maybe not taking their children into the healthcare system for other conditions while the coronavirus pandemic is with us. How are you monitoring that situation at the moment and have you had to look at your own commutation strategy in relation to that?
We've had to look at some specifics around communication, so challenges about not just different languages, but about how we get messages to people in a very different environment, and it's really challenging. So, for example, our health visitor service has absolutely not stopped. We've had to think about the way it works, and I had this conversation earlier this week with the chief nurse. But the bigger challenge are parents refusing to engage with the service. I understand people's fear and anxiety, but that then means that their family, and in particular their child, isn't getting the sort of proactive care that we would want them to have. So, there's a real concern both at the professional leadership end and for the chief nurse and for Ministers as well about how we can get through. That's actually about rebuilding people's confidence in the service, and that isn't straightforward because there's a broader concern about coronavirus still circulating. But I think for us it's really important to reiterate that we have thought again about how to provide the service. We've thought about how to protect staff and families and the very clear message to parents is to please make sure that when health and care professionals are calling to help and support your family, please discuss your concerns with them. We're doing even more remotely, via telephone and online as well. There are times you need to be physically in the same place, for example on routine vaccinations, because we certainly haven't stopped that programme either, and I really wouldn't want to see that one of the unintended consequences of what we've done is that if parents don't engage with that service, we could potentially see a rise in other diseases. We're all, I think—not just you in your constituency, but others who are on this call and others as well—seeing an occasional reappearance of measles, and that's because people didn't engage with the vaccination programme. I don't want, either myself or a different health Minister in the future, to be sat here talking about how in years to come the failure to engage in a vaccination programme has led to clearly avoidable but significant harm to children and young people and the communities they live in.
Thank you. Jean, you wanted to come in.
You need to unmute yourself. Oh, no—