TRR 10

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Cyflwynwyd yr ymateb hwn i'r Pwyllgor Plant, Pobl Ifanc ac Addysg ar gyfer yr ymchwiliad i recriwtio a chadw athrawon

This response was submitted to the Children, Young People and Education Committee on the Inquiry into Teacher recruitment and retention

Ymateb gan: Cymorth Addysg
Response from: Education Support

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About Education Support                                                                                    

 

Established by teachers for teachers, Education Support has been supporting educators for 148 years. We are the UK’s only charity dedicated to supporting the mental health and wellbeing of teachers and education staff.

 

We support individuals and help schools, colleges and universities to improve the mental health and wellbeing of their staff. We also carry out research and advocate for changes in Government policy for the benefit of the education workforce, using our unique combination of expertise in the education sector and mental health and wellbeing.

 

Our services

 

·         We have a free, confidential, 24/7 emotional support helpline for teachers and education staff. They can call us, day or night, and speak to a qualified counsellor who understands the challenges faced by those in the education sector.

·         We also offer free to access mental health and wellbeing resources and tools online.

·         In Wales, we provide a Staff Wellbeing Advisory Service, which provides bespoke support to schools, to help them on their wellbeing improvement journey. We also provide professional supervision for school leaders, funded by Welsh Government.

·         We also provide Employee Assistance Programmes for schools and colleges.

·         We develop our own independent research to provide evidence for key issues facing the sector. Relevant examples include our 2023 reports Teaching: the new reality and our report from our Teacher Retention Commission Modernising the Professional Lives of Teachers. We also publish our annual Teacher Wellbeing Index which provides an annual snapshot of the sector’s wellbeing, as well as exploring topical issues.

 

Why we are submitting evidence

 

Education Support welcomes the opportunity to submit evidence to the Senedd’s Children, Young People and Education Committee’s inquiry into teacher recruitment and retention in Wales. We are pleased to contribute based on our understanding of the education sector, which is informed by our regular surveys and focus groups with school and college leaders and education staff, and the direct work we do with thousands of educators in Wales. These insights into the lived experiences of those working in education directly inform our research and advocacy work.

Since 2020, Education Support’s Staff Wellbeing Service in Wales has supported over 1,600 individuals and 620 schools, reaching approximately 23,000 staff and 200,000 pupils. This has been delivered through professional supervision, an advisory service, workshops, peer support groups and masterclasses. In 2025, we have expanded our services in Wales to focus on supporting schools to improve their organisational culture. Commissioned by Welsh Government, we have also developed a co-creation project on professional learning for educators in Wales. The project aims to support educators to build knowledge and skills around child development, neurodiversity, and mental health, as well as through attitudinal change grounded in genuine professional growth and development building on the excellent work already being delivered across the sector. 

We are a charity with a mission to improve the mental health and wellbeing of teachers and education staff. We believe that better mental health leads to better education. TheWarwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (WEMWBS) is a measure used by a variety of different organisations, including governments, to gauge the mental wellbeing of a population. The latest wellbeing score for education practitioners in Wales (43.8) was significantly below the average wellbeing score for the Wales adult population (48.2) – a WEMWMBS score of 41-44 is indicative of possible/mild depression. In 2019, 64% of education staff in Wales said they were stressed from working - this had risen to 81% in 2024 (data from our Teacher Wellbeing Index).[i]

No one can do their best job if they are mentally and emotionally depleted. Healthy teachers are better able to provide high quality education and support for pupils. Teaching quality is widely recognised as the key factor to children and young people’s educational outcomes, and education is a leading determinant of economic growth. Investment in our teaching workforce is an investment in the next generation of children and young people.

Competitive pay is a hugely important part of the education staff retention picture. As a mental health and wellbeing charity, however, we also see other important aspects of a career in education as important for retaining staff. These include working conditions, investment in the right kind of skills, making time and space for reflective practice, the status and appreciation afforded to our educators, and more. This response will focus on these issues as it reflects our expertise, and we know other stakeholders will explore issues surrounding pay in more detail. It should also be noted that many of the themes discussed ultimately come back to funding. The need for greater funding for education, ALN and mental health services in Wales cannot be underestimated – nor can the detrimental impact of insufficient funding to meet the level of need in the system.

As Welsh Government develops its new strategic education workforce plan, it must place equal emphasis on retention - not just recruitment. Without a clear focus on keeping talented staff in the profession, recruitment efforts will fall short. Teacher recruitment and retention are two sides of the same coin: there is no sustainable recruitment without effective retention.

Our response to the inquiry will focus on factors affecting retention and actions that should be taken to address recruitment and retention.

Factors affecting retention

1.     Expanding role of educators post-Covid

Overall, there is a sense from educators in Wales that their role has changed significantly post-Covid. The role and expectations of schools and teachers have shifted, and schools can be viewed as the solution for every social issue that arises in a community.

In February 2025, we carried out a series of focus groups with educators in Wales to understand their experiences. A key theme which came through was the challenges faced by the profession changing over time and becoming increasingly challenging in recent years:

·         “The challenge [is that] it's a different job to …a few years back, different challenges [and] constraints.” (Deputy Headteacher, High School, North Wales)

Reasons for this change include constrained budgets, issues with staffing levels and recruitment, particular challenges in recruiting specialist staff, and pupils not coming into school ready to learn:

·         “You’ve got children who aren't toilet trained at four or five, or [their] speech, speech level is so poor.” (Class Teacher and Subject Leader, Primary School, South Wales)  

We explored some of these changes in our 2023 research report, Teaching: the new reality, which shed light on the critical role of teachers and their expanding responsibilities in modern education. The research shows that as the roles of teachers and education staff expand, the added responsibilities affect their mental health and wellbeing, which ultimately has an impact on children and young people’s education. Our survey of education staff across the UK found that in 2022:

·         62% reported offering increased amounts of emotional support to pupils or students since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic;

·         45% offer more support to vulnerable pupils and their families;

·         83% of all senior leaders and 70% of all teachers describe themselves as emotionally exhausted.[ii]

These changes, often caused by failing wider public services, leave schools left to fill in the gaps of unmet needs of both pupils and parents, resulting in increased workload and work intensity. Lack of support from wider public services has a significant, negative impact on the morale and wellbeing of education staff and children and young people in Wales. In our 2024 Teacher Wellbeing Index:

·         47% of staff working in Wales feel their students received little or no support from public bodies (e.g. CAMHS, social services, the NHS).

·         Of this group:

o   87% said this negatively affects the mental health and wellbeing of their pupils and students.

o   59% said it negatively affects their own wellbeing.

o   70% told us it negatively affects their job satisfaction.[iii]

Educators also report increasingly managing safeguarding cases in recent years, navigating relationships with mental health professionals, the police and other support services. Working in a time-poor environment, there is a sense that there is not enough time to properly debrief staff who experience a difficult safeguarding issue. In this way, education staff can experience vicarious trauma without adequate support for their own mental health.

·         “I wasn’t given that time off [when speaking about the opportunity for time off after a heavy domestic violence case] and that impacted me really significantly going into the Christmas [holidays]. I got very, very poorly last Christmas and nothing desperate, but I was back at work in the January.”

Although educators broadly welcome new policy developments in Wales, such as the new curriculum, education staff tell us that the relentless pace of change has been exhausting:

·         “Not the same level of energy to keep on doing new things and keep on changing everything. We embrace the new curriculum now. We've got new GCSEs with no guidance. In two years’ time, we'll have new A levels with probably the same level of guidance and it's just all very frustrating.” (Assistant Headteacher, High School, North Wales)  

·         “We're also in…the middle of a big curriculum and assessment change as well. So I think, as educators, we're trying to get grips with that and that's constantly, … evolving.”( ALNCo, Primary School, South Wales) WALES) 

2.     Workload and work intensity

Teacher workload is a huge problem that reduces job satisfaction and therefore drives staff attrition. Our 2022 Teacher Wellbeing Index found that over half (53%) of education staff in Wales had actively sought to change or leave their jobs in the past academic year, with workload cited as a main driver.[iv]

Systemic challenges driving increased workload: Our research, Teaching: the new reality, demonstrates how wider social factors – and struggling public services ecosystem – cause a huge amount of work to show up in schools. Social, emotional and mental health support takes up an increasing amount of staff time. In our 2024 Teacher Wellbeing Index, 47% of education staff in Wales told us they do not receive enough support from external agencies (like CAHMS, social services or the NHS) to meet the needs of their pupils. 59% of education staff in Wales said this negatively affects their mental health and wellbeing and 70% find it hard to switch off in the evenings.[v]

·         Wider systemic factors are showing up in the classroom, increasing the emotional burden on staff, increasing their working hours and pulling them away from teaching and learning. It is predictable that this affects staff morale and job satisfaction. Teacher retention is likely to improve if public services also improve. We cannot expect school staff to keep picking up what other public services cannot address.

·         There has been no guidance for schools on the limit of their responsibilities. We regularly hear from staff that they are delivering more: pastoral and emotional support; support for ALN and neurodivergence that they do not feel adequately trained on; support for parents and their emotional and mental health, or personal issues; as well as attempting to ensure that pupils are fed and clothed.

·         We cannot continue to expect education staff to limitlessly go beyond their expertise in teaching and learning, and only the Government can help to rectify the wider structural picture. This means that we either expand the resources available to meet the true level of need across communities, or we set limits on what can reasonably be expected of education staff. If we are unwilling to make this decision, we will continue to see talented people leave the profession. 

 

Negative health effects of overworking: The World Health Organisations says that working more than 55 hours per week constitutes a "serious health hazard”, associated with significantly higher risk of stroke and heart disease. We regularly hear from some education staff that they work over 55 hours per week.

 

Increased work intensity: Not only are staff working hours too long, but the intensity of their work hours is also growing, which is very important when considering staff attrition rates. Professor Francis Green has highlighted the increase in work intensity (the rate of mental input to tasks) for teachers and the decline in task discretion relative to other professions. This drives reduced job quality and reduced job satisfaction. The number of hours worked is only part of the problem - the nature and intensity of the work is a big challenge too.

 

High workload + high intensity = high stress: When we ask school leaders and staff what they would ask Government for, to improve their working life, they invariably ask for ‘more time’. This might be articulated as more money for more members of staff, or more PPA, but when interrogated, it often boils down to a need for more space in the day. Professional reflection, developing good community relationships and developing tailored approaches for individual pupils should be a given for any educator. The reality is that we ask for so much from our education staff that every second of the day is squeezed and relationships quickly become transactional. This can leave staff feeling like they are fire-fighting, and they can struggle to feel they are making a difference for their pupils or communities. We must work to reduce the intensity of school staff workload, enabling them to focus on the teaching and learning that they are best equipped and motivated to do.

Middle-tier and local authority relationships: We also hear from educators on the ground that middle tier organisations in Wales, set up to support schools, are often seen as organisations that exacerbate, rather than alleviate, unnecessarily high workload. Teachers and education staff have shared experiences of duplication, mixed messages and unclear lines of accountability, all of which add to workload and work intensity. Many schools also tell us that they feel the lack of equity and disparities in resources available in each local authority. Fewer resources available not only increases workload in a given area, but also negatively affects morale and a sense of fairness across the profession. More could be done to pool resources and funding across the 22 different local authorities in Wales and to improve opportunities for shared learning, best practice and collaboration.

 

3.     Pupil and parent behaviour

 

Another contributing factor to increased workload and work intensity is challenging pupil and parent behaviour. In our Teacher Wellbeing Index 2024, teachers and education staff in Wales told us they feel that both pupil and parent behaviour has become more challenging in recent years.

·         58% of education staff working in Wales say that they experienced more incidents of challenging pupil behaviour compared to last year.

o   Of this group, 80% tell us this negatively affects their mental health and wellbeing.

·         43% of staff in Wales say their school has experienced more vexatious complaints from parents and guardians compared to last academic year.[vi]

 

For some educators in our focus groups, there is a sense that parental responsibility has shifted towards school staff:

·         “We had social workers in school, and then it just became a thing of the past. And they said, right, all those jobs, your school's going to do all that now.” (Deputy Headteacher, High School, North Wales)

·         “Whether it's been … because… home life is changing, or parents are splitting and they're just asking teachers: can you talk to my child about the fact that we're splitting up?... That's not a one-off occurrence, that's happened a few times this academic year.” (Class Teacher and Subject Leader, Primary School, South Wales)

·         “Schools have now got to educate and support parents with things like toileting, tooth brushing, even cutting nails.” (Assistant Head, Primary School, South Wales)  

 

Children have increased social, emotional and mental health (SEMH) needs, which present additional barriers to learning. Teachers and leaders have a deep sense of purpose and commitment to children and young people, so they try their hardest to meet those needs, often without the right training, support or resources. This is increasing their workload and negatively affecting their mental health.

Educators themselves believe that this poor pupil or student behaviour is driven by a lack of provision for children’s unmet physical, emotional, or mental health needs at school, college, or at home (e.g. related to the cost-of-living crisis or deprivation).[vii]

 

Poor pupil and parent behaviour negatively affect educators’ ability to switch off from work, their self-efficacy, and job satisfaction, with knock-on effects for staff attrition rates. We have heard many examples of teachers feeling unsafe at school, with physical abuse driving some staff away from the profession.

To respond to the impact that these challenges present, Welsh Government aims to increase the professional capacity of the education workforce to affect the Whole School Approach (WSA) to emotional and mental wellbeing in their day-to-day work as educators. This will be achieved by building knowledge and skills around child development, neurodiversity, and mental health, as well as through attitudinal change grounded in genuine professional growth and development building on the excellent work already being delivered across the sector. 

·         This will be delivered via a sector wide professional learning programme. The aim is that the programme becomes a mechanism that enhances staff wellbeing, supporting all staff to deal with daily classroom challenges such as difficult behaviour, whilst addressing the wellbeing of our children and young people, and wider communities.

·         The approach to designing the professional learning has been underpinned by high quality co-production with education practitioners and subject matter experts, giving the final result the best possible chance of resonating with the educators who will eventually receive the training. This has been facilitated by Education Support and funded by Welsh Government. 

 

4.     Estyn and the accountability system

 

Teachers and education staff in Wales regularly tell us that Estyn and the accountability system cause educators high anxiety. 37.2% of leaders that signed up for professional supervision support in 2023/24 reported Estyn inspections being the thing that concerned them the most.

·         “My negativity about the teaching profession is more to do with the training they are providing for new professionals. Also, and probably no surprise, the inspection system!!” (Headteacher, Wales)

Through our Staff Wellbeing Advisory service in Wales, we hear that the inspection system is a key driver of high workloads and negative cultures in schools. As well as increased workload, inspections create a culture of fear that can trickle down through leadership into the wider school community.

When asked what factors are most affecting the mental health and wellbeing of staff, 32% of schools taking part in the advisory service across 2024/25 cited Estyn or pre Estyn inspections.

·         “Working in schools is becoming increasingly stressful due to increased workload and expectations from both parents and the local authority and inspection teams.”

 

5.     Leadership and culture

In our 2024 Teacher Wellbeing Index, 51% of education staff working in Wales told us their organisation’s culture had a negative impact on their mental health and wellbeing.[viii] Cultivating good school cultures is vital for staff retention.

Relational skills training: as we highlighted in our 2023 report ‘Modernising the professional lives of teachers’, many school leaders are promoted based on their high technical capabilities as teachers. People management skills, or high calibre relational skills, have never been prioritised or invested in. We hear regularly from school staff that time and space to develop better relationships would help when dealing with parents, pupils and colleagues.

Reflective practice: reflective practice, such as professional supervision, makes a real impact on staff and school leaders’ job satisfaction and intention to stay in their careers. We are proud to be delivering professional supervision for school leaders, on behalf of the Welsh Government, but we can go further in making it established practice for everyone in the sector. ALNCos would also benefit hugely from the service due to the level of complexity and emotional content they face everyday. Our data shows that a relatively low-cost intervention, like professional supervision, can have a big impact on personal wellbeing. Wider investment in, and availability of, reflective practice should be included in any workforce retention strategy.

·         In 2024/25, there was a 24% reduction in the number of school leaders saying they are likely to leave their job in the next academic year, after accessing professional supervision in Wales. We also saw improvements in wellbeing, with participants’ average WEMWBS score increasing from 45.2 to 52.6, after completing six sessions of supervision.

·         Qualitative feedback on the link between participating in professional supervision in Wales and retention is evidenced in the following quotes from participants:

o    “I have worked through the reasons why I was considering leaving education, my intrinsic motivation and the reasons why I entered education and why I am so passionate about my job. I think the supervision has helped to reinforce my motivation and passion for my role, and reinforce that my doubts about my ability may come from external factors, rather than anything else.” 

o    “If I am honest, I had started to feel that I wanted to leave the profession. The supervision sessions have made feel a sense of purpose again.”

o    “I honestly believe that without supervision, I may have been absent from work, as the level of stress that my role presents on an ongoing basis is so high and relentless, that it provides and creates very little capacity or headroom for my own life.” 

Organisational culture:  Plenty of evidence indicates that cultures in schools have a real impact on staff experience, wellbeing and effectiveness. School leaders are often attempting to engage, motivate and support teams to do the near impossible. Many do this without a modern understanding of organisational cultures and team dynamics. Some are instinctively excellent at it, but too many schools remain ‘old school’ hierarchical environments that feel increasingly antiquated alongside modern workplaces. Flexible working, boundaried work-life balance and skilled, supportive line management are necessities if education is to be a relatively attractive career choice.

Bringing our expertise in education, workplace wellbeing and mental health together with what we understand from academic literature in leadership and culture, we have been developing support to help leaders understand what cultivating great cultures can look, and feel, like. Our aim is to help leaders better understand the factors that contribute to school culture, help them identify their specific areas for improvement and to support them to make positive change. This work builds on our Staff Wellbeing Advisory Service in Wales, which we have been delivering since 2020 with funding from Welsh Government. 

Schools having access to (and time with) experts to reflect and think about culture matters. It's not just a tick box, it's a fundamental part of the workforce being able to deliver good quality education. After engaging with the advisory service, schools reported:

·         Improved knowledge in how to support staff with their mental health and wellbeing

·         More confidence in planning wellbeing activity

·         More motivation to put plans into action

·         75% of schools had an action plan in place as a direct result of the service.

6.     Status of the profession

Another key theme from our focus groups with teachers and education staff in Wales is the sense that the teaching profession no longer receives the appreciation, respect and trust it once did. Some participants felt less valued, especially when compared to other public service professionals, such as doctors and nurses.

·         “We don't get the same respect of being a professional with a doctor. …, I'm sure people question doctors because that's the way people have gone now, but they get a lot more respect in the first place." (Deputy Principal, All Through School, South Wales)

·         “I went on to… have a little look on Facebook and one of the things on there… lists the jobs that people view as used to be respected but [now] view as a total joke. And the first thing that pops up is teachers. When we’re getting this kind of message all the time through social media, I think it has a really negative impact on us as teachers.” (Deputy Headteacher, Special School, West Wales)

 

7.     Impact on school leaders

This inquiry is particularly interested in specific factors affecting recruitment and retention of school leaders. School leader wellbeing is a real cause for concern. Our Teacher Wellbeing Index 2024 finds that rates of anxiety, depression, burnout and acute stress among leaders remain at high levels across the UK, including Wales. This has a meaningful impact on the health of individual leaders, their teams; as well as staff retention and the quality of education that can be delivered for our children and young people.

Many of the challenges outlined above are experienced far more acutely by school leaders, who also carry the additional pressures of managing school budgets and possible staff redundancies. We also hear that these pressures are intensified in rural schools in Wales, where leaders can feel more professionally isolated.

Leaders tell us that they experience a “burden of failure” from the emotional toll of leading an organisation where they know that children cannot thrive, but feel that there is nothing they can do about it due to systemic factors. This is exacerbated by a sense that there is positive, well-intentioned ambition and vision for education in Wales, but that this cannot always be delivered on the ground.

This widening gap between vision and reality on the ground and the implications of ‘not getting it right’ are weighted and can lead to disillusionment and moral injury amongst educators. This is incredibly difficult to hold - school leaders need support to hold themselves and their staff including through reflective practice, such as professional supervision.

There is also a personal cost of the work for all education staff, but particularly for leaders. Whilst our collective attention is on school leaders as professionals who can significantly influence outcomes for communities of children and young people, it would be wrong to neglect the personal cost that can go with a career in education. Through our professional supervision work, we have heard many leaders reflect on the vocational nature of their work. In a highly professionalised and regulated sector, vocation can be a problematic ideal, eliding the boundary between personal and professional identity.

As a result, when work is challenging or difficult, the effects spill over into the personal realm, often at extremely high costs. We suspect that this may contribute to the relatively high degree of stress observed in the education workforce, compared to other industries (Healthy and Safety Executive, 2023)[ix]. It is notable that employees in education reported the highest levels of presenteeism in the public sector with individuals ‘always’ or ‘often’ going to work ill with poor mental health (Deloitte, 2022)[x]. Further research would be helpful to better understand the link between vocation, professional identity and stress. 

 

Recommendations to address recruitment and retention

 

We propose four measures that could help to address the factors affecting education staff retention discussed above.

 

1.     Properly fund additional learning or support needs, children’s mental health and social services, and poverty reduction programmes.

 

There are large, systemic challenges that need to be addressed to improve the picture in our schools in Wales. This includes bringing more families out of poverty (approximately 30% of children in Wales are living in poverty[xi]), improving children and young people’s mental health and addressing the challenges in our ALN system.

 

Even the best performing schools and colleges on the planet cannot meet every need of every child or young person by themselves. Increasingly, school and college leaders, lecturers, teachers and support staff feel professionally isolated, and left holding the consequences of wider system failure, while children and young people are let down. This can never be professionally satisfying, no matter how big the bursary or how brilliant the flexible working offer might be.

The impact of poor mental health, challenging pupil and parent behaviour, workload, and work intensity - all in the context of rising child poverty, CAMHS waiting lists and unmet ALN needs - are having a huge impact on the morale and job satisfaction of our educators.

Addressing these issues requires significant investment in public services, to ensure that children and young people receive the quality support they need and deserve, and that teachers and educators can stop trying to fill the gaps in services every day. We do, however, recognise that these are large stones to move and this will take time.

 

While we wait for this to be addressed, we will continue to lose experienced and skilled support staff, teachers, lecturers and leaders from our education system.

 

2.     Prioritise cultivating good school cultures.

 

Our teaching workforce – and children and young people – cannot wait for the dial to shift on these large systemic issues. Changes need to be felt by schools and colleges soon, or we risk losing even more talented teachers, lecturers and leaders. At a school-level, cost-effective, and swift, changes can be made by focusing on:

 

·         Supporting school and college leaders to cultivate better cultures in their organisations: ones that prioritise building relationships and good quality connections among staff and their pupils and learners.

·         Investing in quality training and development for all staff so they are equipped with the relational skills needed to support their pupils/learners and each other, as well as allowing them to properly deal with rising behavioural challenges among parents.

·         Expanding the commitment to reflective practice to reduce the sense of intensity among education staff and allow them to reconnect with their sense of purpose and increase their job satisfaction. Commitment to sustained investment in, and availability of, reflective practice, such as professional supervision, should be included in any future workforce strategy.

 

3.     Set new retention targets for the school workforce in Wales – including teachers, leaders and support staff – published annually.

In the same way that there are targets for recruiting trainee teachers in Wales, so too should retention be a Key Performance Indicator of Welsh Government. A retention KPI should be established to guide its work alongside the existing recruitment target, ensuring a dual focus in policymaking.

4.     Provide the teaching profession with clarity in defining what is schools’ responsibility and what is not, following the expanded roles of educators following the Covid-19 pandemic.

With public services failing to meet the needs of many children and young people – and poverty continuing to rise – teachers continue to fill the gaps and try to provide support that they often lack adequate training or support to provide.We cannot keep relying on the teaching workforce to fill in where wider public services cannot. This is directly driving the workload and workload intensity issues outlined above.

To achieve this, Welsh Government should publish a list of things that schools must stop doing, in clear terms. The teaching profession needs clarity from the government in defining what is schools’ responsibility and what is not, following the expanded roles of educators in light of the Covid-19 pandemic.

One of the main reasons teachers choose their career path is the opportunity to make a difference to people’s lives. The second most important reason? Because they love the subject they teach. Teachers want to be in the classroom. Yet the empty work – like data drops and unnecessary marking - persists.

The Government must acknowledge the scale of this challenge and its relevance to the staff retention challenge, and take steps to address it. This needs to take the form of either more capacity in the school and college workforce – and relevant training and expertise – or by making it clear what falls beyond the remit of educators.

 

Conclusion

 

As Welsh Government develops its new strategic education workforce plan, we urge it to seriously prioritise the retention of school staff, alongside its recruitment aims. It is vital that the points above are addressed and that retention is given equal importance alongside recruitment, so that experienced educators remain in the system for the benefit of children and young people. Teacher recruitment and retention challenges in Wales have only worsened since Covid-19 and it is ultimately children and young people who are being let down.

                                                                                                                        June 2025.