Thank you for the question. I’m actually pleased when social care gets mentioned in these questions. It’s very easy to simply default to simply talking about the health service and doctors in particular in this set of questions. I don’t share your suggestion that social care has had massive cuts in Wales. Actually, we’ve seen health and social care together. Massive cuts have taken place within England and, if you look at what’s happened here in Wales, we’re in a much, much better position—not just in terms of the funding, because funding is, I think, 7 per cent per head higher on health and social care in Wales than in England, but in the way in which we see the whole service: the way we fund it, and how we look to organise it. That’s why the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 is such an important indicator of the move forward. We see health and social care needing to work more progressively together—not because there is more need and more demand coming through, but actually we think people get a better service with better outcomes.

How do those people collaborate and work together? That’s why the Minister will be setting out, progressively, throughout the rest of this term, how we’ll implement the social services and well-being Act, the areas of mandated working together, and the areas where we encourage people to work together as well. If you just want to think about the workforce as well, it’s right to say that this is a highly pressured profession. It is not an easy job and social workers are often held up as the bad people when something goes wrong. Actually, we need more people to value the profession and recognise what they can do in supporting families to still be together as a family, to make choices together, and to help make people get out of very difficult parts of their lives.

I’m delighted to say that the British Association of Social Workers have recognised that, in Wales, it is a much better environment to work than other parts of the UK. That’s the profession itself talking about the reality of working here. It doesn’t mean that it’s easy in Wales, it doesn’t mean to say that there isn’t pressure, but we definitely have a better service and a better system and a better response than you’ll find over the border. Our challenge is how we continue to improve, bearing in mind the unavoidable reality that we will have less money to work with each and every year within this Assembly term.