, Health and Social Care Committee
General scrutiny session with the Minister for Social Care
I'm more than happy to do that, yes.
, Health and Social Care Committee
General scrutiny session with the Minister for Social Care
So, you tarried and I got in first.
, Health and Social Care Committee
General scrutiny session with the Minister for Social Care
I will include that in the response. And if I could just come back to—very briefly, Chair—the point I was making earlier about the regional partnership board consultation, on the governance of the regional partnership board—that consultation went live on 16…
, Health and Social Care Committee
General scrutiny session with the Minister for Social Care
Yes, absolutely, Heledd. I'm more than happy to send you a detailed paper for the committee, for you to have a look at. And I'd be quite happy to come back and have a further conversation with you, specifically about unpaid carers, if you wish to do that. I…
, Health and Social Care Committee
General scrutiny session with the Minister for Social Care
Yes, absolutely, Heledd. I'm happy to reassure both the committee and the public that improving support for unpaid carers is a priority, and continues to be a priority for Welsh Government. Just this week, I attended the ministerial advisory group for unpaid…
, Health and Social Care Committee
General scrutiny session with the Minister for Social Care
Yes, so pay is one issue and it's absolutely vitally important. Put that to one side at the moment. There are lots of other things that people want when they are at work. They want to be happy at work. They want to feel safe at work. They want their…
, Health and Social Care Committee
General scrutiny session with the Minister for Social Care
One of the things that we know is that pay is not always the overriding determining factor.
, Health and Social Care Committee
General scrutiny session with the Minister for Social Care
It absolutely is, Chair, and one of the—
, Health and Social Care Committee
General scrutiny session with the Minister for Social Care
And we are starting to see some improvements but we still have a long way to go. I think we have about 5,000 vacancies still across social care. Sorry, go on.
, Health and Social Care Committee
General scrutiny session with the Minister for Social Care
There's been a lot of work going on already. We published a health and social care workforce strategy about three years ago. That was a 10-year plan—I'll ask Taryn to come in and say a bit about that in a moment—and I'm shortly going to be publishing a social…
, Health and Social Care Committee
General scrutiny session with the Minister for Social Care
I'll write to the committee about that because we do have a consultation out on regional partnership boards and strengthening their governance and so on.
, Health and Social Care Committee
General scrutiny session with the Minister for Social Care
Let me just say in starting that regional partnership boards are responsible for £145 million of regional integration funding, which is going towards supporting this programme of eliminating the delayed transfers of care. And there are some really good…
, Health and Social Care Committee
General scrutiny session with the Minister for Social Care
It is.
, Health and Social Care Committee
General scrutiny session with the Minister for Social Care
We absolutely aren't just accepting it for what it is. I can absolutely guarantee you of that. This is a significant priority for me and the Cabinet member. We are looking at different ways of engaging with our partners in the regions. We clearly have to get…
, Health and Social Care Committee
General scrutiny session with the Minister for Social Care
Yes, that is absolutely what we're hoping to do. And I think also it is about regions working collaboratively to improve community-based care capacity, because one of the things that we have identified as being absolutely critical to this is actually…
, Health and Social Care Committee
General scrutiny session with the Minister for Social Care
There'll be variation, yes.
, Health and Social Care Committee
General scrutiny session with the Minister for Social Care
Firstly, I would say that it absolutely is a very high priority for both me and for the Cabinet Secretary for health. This is an area that I mentioned earlier we have joint responsibility for, and we are jointly concerned about it. We do meet regularly to…
, Health and Social Care Committee
Health and Social Care (Wales) Bill: evidence session with the Minister for Social Care
Not getting it quickly enough, or not seeing the outcomes delivered quickly enough. I have no concerns around the provisions and what we're trying to achieve—I think they are absolutely right. I think some of the practical applications may be a bit slower…
, Health and Social Care Committee
Health and Social Care (Wales) Bill: evidence session with the Minister for Social Care
So, as Albert has already said, we do expect to see reductions in costs. We've got 10 years' experience of this in England, where they have seen significant savings by the introduction of these direct payments. But, of course, the way in which we fund the…
, Health and Social Care Committee
Health and Social Care (Wales) Bill: evidence session with the Minister for Social Care
All I can say is none of the modelling has been based on expected savings due to lower wages for PAs and social care workforce. The financial modelling has been based on an average figure of £50,000 per annum for a CHC package, and that was obtained from the…
, Health and Social Care Committee
Health and Social Care (Wales) Bill: evidence session with the Minister for Social Care
Thank you, Heledd. So, the regulatory impact assessment does contain extensive modelling about the financial implications for LHBs. It's anticipated that probably about 110 people—that's around about 1 per cent of the continuing healthcare cohort who are…
, Health and Social Care Committee
Health and Social Care (Wales) Bill: evidence session with the Minister for Social Care
Thank you, Heledd, for that question. I think what it does do is it takes time to get multidisciplinary teams together to progress the assessments, and sometimes delays due to CHC are reported as part of the delayed pathways of care reporting. However, there…
, Health and Social Care Committee
Health and Social Care (Wales) Bill: evidence session with the Minister for Social Care
What I would say, Chair, is that most of the issues around the continuing healthcare direct payments [Correction: 'around continuing healthcare'] are probably not associated with the Bill. The Bill is only about enabling the provision for direct payments to…
, Health and Social Care Committee
Health and Social Care (Wales) Bill: evidence session with the Minister for Social Care
In terms of disincentives, the stakeholders have been very vocal about the need for this, and I think the awareness raising amongst those stakeholders would make it very difficult for any health board, I would suggest, to not be applying that. But, again…
, Health and Social Care Committee
Health and Social Care (Wales) Bill: evidence session with the Minister for Social Care
Again, the take-up of direct payments in social care is outside the scope of this Bill. I'm quite happy to take some time of the committee this morning talking about it a little bit, or rather I could write to you, because it's actually not about the Bill…
