input: Text: Lynne Neagle AM: Okay. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Children, Young People and Education Committee. We've received apologies for absence from Suzy Davies and Jack Sargeant and I'm very pleased to welcome Jayne Bryant back, who is substituting for Jack today. Are there any declarations of interest from Members, please? No. Okay, thank you. Item 2, then, this morning, is our sixth scrutiny session on the Children (Abolition of Defence of Reasonable Punishment) (Wales) Bill. I'm very pleased to welcome our witnesses this morning: Sally Jenkins, who is chair of All Wales Heads of Children’s Services and is here representing the Association of Directors of Social Services; Alastair Birch, who is senior system leader for equalities and safeguarding at Pembrokeshire County Council, who is here representing the Association of Directors of Education Wales; and Councillor Huw David, who is the Welsh Local Government Association spokesperson for health and social care and leader of Bridgend County Borough Council. So, thank you all for attending this morning. We're very pleased to have you here. We've got a lot of ground to cover, so, if you're happy, we'll go straight into questions and I'll start just by asking about your general support for the Bill, which is outlined in the evidence. Can you just explain why you think the current law is ineffective or unclear? Alastair Birch: Bore da—bore da, bawb. So, I'm Alastair Birch. The statement, really, from ADEW is that the rights of the child should be educated and achieved, really, under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. The current legislation has been criticised, obviously, by the UN concerning the defence of reasonable punishment still being within our current legislation. So, we will always—ADEW will always—advocate that the rights of the child be upheld, so that is really the fundamental aspect in terms of the statement from ADEW, and the position of ADEW is that the rights of the child are fundamental in this process. And there are certain
  Question: How confident Alastair Birch was that teachers and others working in those educational settings would be clear about how to support the implementation of this Bill?
  Answer:
output: Training requirements for all professionals in education settings were clear. The bible in terms of education professionals included 'keeping learners safe'. Therefore, the awareness needed to be clear for educational professionals that the duty to report was there. When they feel the significant harm happened, they should report this and it would go to the childcare assessment team. And schools were fundamental in the support for the families, since they had the relationships with the families.