Vaughan Gething: To date, I've already awarded £89 million to support 14 proposals, with at least one in each region. Transformation projects are visible across Wales. For example, technology-enabled care in west Wales is bringing communities together and reducing social isolation. In Gwent, services are being reconfigured to provide specialist expertise to staff on the front line in order to support some of...
Vaughan Gething: Thank you, Presiding Officer. Last summer, I provided a written update on 'A Healthier Wales' and the transformation fund to Cabinet. I am pleased to provide a further update today to Members on the transformation fund. I launched the £100 million fund in September 2018. The purpose of the fund is to support the scaling up of new models of seamless health and social care across Wales. New...
Vaughan Gething: Well we've provided significant support as a Government to the health and social care system, sustained investment over and above consequential sums of money. So, in terms of financial support, this Government has absolutely—. And that's objectively undeniable: the Treasury's own figures show that we continue to put more money into our health and health and care system than England, and...
Vaughan Gething: It's a fair point that Joyce Watson makes about the reality of wanting to recruit staff and people working in both domiciliary and residential care, and we do rely on a range of people from outside the UK to do so. So, any barriers to recruiting those people, who are often under the Government's proposed immigration cap, is a real problem for all of us in every one of the UK nations. If we...
Vaughan Gething: Well, I understand why a range of questions have been asked by Angela, but I think a number of the conclusions she reached are significantly unfair and I think she should return again to them. I'll happily go through why I think that is. It's very easy to say this is all about planning and about the inability to deliver and the plans aren't imaginative enough. Actually, I think that's...
Vaughan Gething: Well, there's a wide range of questions in there, Llywydd; I'll try and deal with the points as they've been provided. The starting point is that, of course we know there's extra pressure that comes over winter, and that the start of January is the most difficult time of all, with the pressure that comes in from the end of one festive period, people have put off care, people have gone home in...
Vaughan Gething: Thank you. I'll just start by reiterating my thanks, together with those offered by the First Minister yesterday, to our staff right across the health and social care system in a period of truly exceptional pressure. Every winter provides difficulties, but we have seen exceptional pressures across our system at the end of the festive period and into the start of January. Without their...
Vaughan Gething: Well, I had this conversation today with the Royal College of Nursing and, as I've just said, I'm asking the NHS Wales partnership forum, bringing together the staff trade union side, the Government and NHS employers to do just that, as I've just said, to look locally and nationally at what exists and what should exist for the future as well. This Government will abstain today, as we...
Vaughan Gething: And I'll be coming to retention later in my contribution. But the NHS remains the only part of the public sector that has continued to increase staff numbers despite a decade of austerity, and that's a point that is difficult for other members of public services to recognise. Our colleagues in education, our colleagues right across local government recognise that health has been the big...
Vaughan Gething: Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I'd like to thank Members who have brought forward today's debate and the opportunity to discuss the implementation of Wales's landmark nurse staffing legislation. It's good to see the fellow of the Royal College of Nursing who was the Member in charge of that piece of legislation in the Chamber today as well. Together with colleagues from across the...
Vaughan Gething: Thank you, acting Deputy Presiding Officer. I want to thank the committee for their inquiry and report into community and district nursing services in Wales. I'm pleased to say that the recommendations do broadly reflect Welsh Government policy, as articulated in our 'A Healthier Wales' vision of more care being delivered closer to home. We know that, as part of a multidisciplinary approach...
Vaughan Gething: Thank you for the questions. In terms of next year's GP training numbers, I've set a baseline of 160, and as I indicated in my statement, my intention is to be able to progressively raise the number of GP training places that we will have available to want to fill as our new baseline. However, that does depend on our ability to have the requisite number of training places in practices. So,...
Vaughan Gething: I think it's an important question because there's something about our ability to say, 'This is the right sort of way to work in the future'. There's broad sign-up to that, and then our ability to have the right numbers of staff in the right place to deliver that care. That is a challenge because, if you look back to three years ago and then five years ago, I think there would be a wider...
Vaughan Gething: The most successful part of that was not actually winning a claim in a tribunal; it was actually when you were able to change the nature of the relationship in someone's workplace so that they could stay in work, rather than winning a sum of money once they had left the workplace, or running a claim against their employer to a successful conclusion that often led to the end of the workplace...
Vaughan Gething: On the final point, I had some interaction with the health service before I came to this place, both as a patient but also as a professional, and lots of that was actually—not just within the health service, but on a wide range of areas in the public sector and the private sector—on the business of making reasonable adjustments, to see the continuing value in staff, regardless of their...
Vaughan Gething: Thank you for the series of questions. I think some of that was slightly outside of where we are with 'Train. Work. Live.', but I'll do my best to respond to the points today and I'm pretty sure that, with debates on nursing tomorrow and potentially in the future, there will be plenty of opportunities to talk about workforce. On male nursing, we won't have the figures until at least the end...
Vaughan Gething: Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. The Welsh Government is committed to providing the NHS workforce that we need to ensure the best outcomes for people receiving care. We are achieving this with increased training places, encouraging young people to take up a health professional career, and supporting recruitment through our successful 'Train. Work. Live.' marketing campaign. The 'Train....
Vaughan Gething: Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I'd like to thank Lynne Neagle and Members from all parties who have supported today's debate in raising what is an important and poorly understood issue by the wider public. Now, I recognise the devastating impact that pancreatic cancer can have on people and their families, especially so given its poor diagnosis. For anyone in any doubt, in particular in...
Vaughan Gething: Well, there are some separate points there. The first is that I should remind everyone that independent members go through a public appointments process. It is a robust process, overseen by the commissioner for appointments, and that is not a devolved function, actually. The challenge then is about how they behave when they go to their organisations. There's a point about culture and...
Vaughan Gething: I don't think the Member is in the greatest position to talk about cronyism in public life. When it comes to the position of the staff at Betsi Cadwaladr and the requirement to improve the finance function, our expectation is that staff are appointed in a manner that is consistent with our expectations and the requirements of the health board—it is not a nice-to-have, it is about them being...
