, Plenary
Statement by the Minister for Health and Social Services: Increasing Allied Health Professionals in Primary and Community Care
Thanks very much, Jack. And I can confirm that this £5 million is recurrent, and that means it's sustainable, that means managers can plan ahead with confidence, and that means that people will be able to feel confident, once they're appointed, that they will…
, Plenary
Statement by the Minister for Health and Social Services: Increasing Allied Health Professionals in Primary and Community Care
Thank you, Rhun, and it's lovely to have a positive response when we do talk about health, so thank you for that. These are new people who we're welcoming into the system. When you talk about funding, we have to make choices, and we have chosen to bring more…
, Plenary
Statement by the Minister for Health and Social Services: Increasing Allied Health Professionals in Primary and Community Care
Thank you very much. So, how it’s allocated, obviously this will be proportionate to the population, so we’ll make sure that that reflects the population needs, obviously. Just in terms of how many allied health professionals we’ve got in Wales, we’ve got…
, Plenary
Statement by the Minister for Health and Social Services: Increasing Allied Health Professionals in Primary and Community Care
We have already invested significantly in innovative community services. Our regional integration fund provides more than £144 million to support six national models of integrated care. These models include community-based prevention and community…
, Plenary
Statement by the Minister for Health and Social Services: Increasing Allied Health Professionals in Primary and Community Care
Diolch yn fawr. 'Looking Forward Together: The Allied Health Professions Framework for Wales' identifies the changes required both by allied health professionals and their employers to ensure health and social care secures the highest quality and value from…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24—evidence session 2
Diolch.
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24—evidence session 2
—and to end on more of a political note, I think this is an area where it is a political decision. We know that child poverty levels under a Labour Government went down significantly. You can see the increase from 2010. It is absolutely clear that, from the…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24—evidence session 2
And just to add to that, because I'm assuming we'll be finishing soon—
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24—evidence session 2
I think we offered that last week, didn't we, to another committee. I think it's public, but let me just check. I've set it out publicly anyway, so I'm more than happy for you to see that. It's no secret.
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24—evidence session 2
I'll ask Julie to come in in a moment, but just a few points in terms of where we have directly looked to help. There's the Healthy Start scheme within our budget—£6.9 million there—which helps those younger children who come from poorer families, to buy…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24—evidence session 2
Thank you. We have had to make difficult decisions, and we've had to do that across Government. Just to give you an example, we've had a bill this year for £207 million just for energy costs in our hospitals and so on in the health service, and we weren't…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24—evidence session 2
We’re focused here on 2023-24 rather than 2024-25.
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24—evidence session 2
In other words, everything is kept, unless we’ve said that it’s been cut. It’s easier to see where the cuts are rather than—. It’s the same thing as—
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24—evidence session 2
So, I think it's really important to—. What we tend to do in these sessions is to focus on where the new money's coming from, but actually, when you're under massive pressure, like we are at the moment, where you're seeing real-term cuts as a result of…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24—evidence session 2
So, I think it's really useful to be able to compare one year with the next. So, there are situations where obviously you make in-year adjustments, and sometimes it's good just to get a picture of what's happening at the end of the year. Because we're getting…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24—evidence session 2
Thanks very much for the invitation to come and join you this morning. Before I answer that, if you don't mind, I'll just set a little bit of context for how the health budget works. So, we get about £10 billion—that's about half the Welsh budget—but the…
, Plenary
Plaid Cymru Debate: Management of NHS pressures
I'd just like to say something also about the HEIW education plan that was published today. It's absolutely right that we need more nurses, and that's why we've put an 8 per cent increase in terms of the money we're putting into training people: £281 million…
, Plenary
Plaid Cymru Debate: Management of NHS pressures
In terms of waiting lists in general, there was a reduction in the total number of people awaiting treatment in October, and this is a trend that I hope will continue over the next few months. It's interesting to note that the total number of open pathways in…
, Plenary
Plaid Cymru Debate: Management of NHS pressures
You have a situation where we have a co-operation agreement, and there's money in the budget. If you're saying that we have to re-prioritise everything, then I think we've got to just be absolutely clear that you have made some decisions. You've made some…
, Plenary
Plaid Cymru Debate: Management of NHS pressures
Okay. Well, that's fine. Well, if it is top of the list, I'm just quite intrigued, then—. I'm quite intrigued, we have a co-operation agreement; there is hardly a mention of health in your co-operation agreement. Mental health is there; not a word about…
, Plenary
Plaid Cymru Debate: Management of NHS pressures
Okay.
, Plenary
Plaid Cymru Debate: Management of NHS pressures
Yes, absolutely, and that's already happening. So, that's why we've been having these summits, which have been more or less organised by the NHS executive, which is in shadow form at the moment. But I was really interested in your point that you want us to…
, Plenary
Plaid Cymru Debate: Management of NHS pressures
Diolch yn fawr, Llywydd. I wasn't exactly sure what Plaid Cymru hoped to achieve by getting the Welsh Government to declare a health crisis in Wales, so, I am pleased that I now know the three main points of what you wanted us to focus on, and I am grateful…
, Plenary
Statement by the Minister for Health and Social Services: Update on meeting with NHS trade unions
Thanks very much, Carolyn. Certainly, we're very aware that it's not just about pay; there are lots of other issues around this, which is why I was really pleased to have been presented with the staff welfare project on Monday, by representatives of the trade…
, Plenary
Statement by the Minister for Health and Social Services: Update on meeting with NHS trade unions
Thanks very much. First of all, on the issue of agency workers, I think it's really important we put this into a context. So, 65 per cent of what we spend in the NHS is spent directly on staffing, and, of that, about 6 per cent is spent on agency workers…
