Part of 2. 2. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Health, Well-being and Sport – in the Senedd at 2:37 pm on 9 November 2016.
I don’t recognise the picture that you’re paining in terms of the support that we are giving to sustainable social services, to our third sector grant scheme, which is where the funding to which you refer, which was formally in the family fund, has been brought into. We have that fund, which is worth £22 million, which brings together four previous grant schemes, and we had 84 applications for grants, seeking just over £69 million for that scheme. So, we did try to look at a fair allocation of funding right across that, and the most that any organisation could have in a grant was £1.5 million. So, the family fund received the full £1.5 million in that.
With regard to the future of the family fund, we’ve actually provided them with £400,000 in order to try and become more sustainable in the future. So, that is one of the ways in which we’re supporting disabled families, and Disability Wales and Carers Wales were also awarded funding within the social services third sector grant scheme as well. On the independent living fund, we’ve tried to take a pragmatic approach in terms of speaking with the sector, with social services and also people in receipt of independent living moneys, in order to try to take a step approach in terms of future delivery, by taking the changes over two years. This was the approach that was suggested to us by our advisory group.