Thank you very much. The next questions, then, are from Dawn Bowden on safeguarding and child protection.
Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Deputy Minister, because one of the questions I was going to ask was around some of the work that you've been doing with the third sector on safeguarding and child protection, and I think you've covered that. But what I'm particularly keen to find out is how you're monitoring the impact of coronavirus on child protection and safeguarding in the round. I know the health Minister raised this as a concern in Plenary only recently, and it's really how we are monitoring it, what concerns have been identified, and how we're going to start to tackle some of those.
Yes. Thank you very much, Dawn, for that question. Obviously, it is difficult to monitor if there's not easy access to the children that we're referring to, and that's why we have been trying to encourage the vulnerable children to go into school or childcare settings. And there's been a lot of encouragement for that happen. The Minister, the director of education and the director of social services sent out a joint letter recently to all the local authorities, asking them to try to encourage the vulnerable children and the families to get the children to go to school. In fact, we've now got 890 vulnerable children attending school settings, and that's the highest number that we've had at all since the opening of the scheme. But it's still only a tiny drop in the ocean. But it's very good, and it is progress that the numbers attending are now going up. But, of course, there are a lot of children who are not attending school and the social services are not necessarily seeing. There has been a drop in safeguarding referrals to social services. Those numbers are now beginning to go up, but there certainly was a significant drop, which is a great deal of concern. One local authority, in fact, reported a drop of 27 per cent in terms of safeguarding referrals compared to this time last year. So, I issued a written statement on 1 May, setting out the work taken forward under our cross-departmental vulnerable children, young people and safeguarding work stream, and encouraging people to report any safeguarding concerns there are. Because, obviously, we are dependent on the public authorities—you know, schools and health services—to report any concerns, and at the moment, obviously, they're not there to report them. So, we have made this public appeal for everyone to look out for each other, and I was very interested in what Siân Gwenllian told me about what was being done in Anglesey in terms of sending out a message via social media to get people to look and listen, and to raise their concerns, because, obviously, safeguarding is the concern of everybody in the community. But I think that we are reassured in terms of our contact with the local authorities that they are, in fact, keeping close touch, as far as they possibly can, with all the children that are vulnerable. For those where it is very critical, face-to-face contact is still taking place, and there are imaginative ways of trying to keep in touch with all the other children and families. So, it is a difficult situation and we are concerned about it, but I think as much as possible is being done.
Jean, you wanted to come in on that.