Part of 3. 2. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Health, Well-being and Sport – in the Senedd at 2:38 pm on 25 January 2017.
Thank you for that answer, and I don’t challenge you on your answer on the rise in the cap on payments towards domiciliary care, but I’m still struggling to find out what exactly it is that this £10 million will go on. What I’m picking up from your answer is that it’s primarily to do with staff retention, and that may well be the case, but that’s what I want to be able to see happening as a result of this extra money coming into the system.
I think we probably agree that preventing avoidable reliance on social care is worth while, both to our citizens and obviously for the services that provide that care. In my meeting with members of the Welsh NHS Confederation today, the key players—and they are key players in this, there is no two ways about that—summed up the current situation like this: they said that Wales has the answers for growing demand for more complex social care, but it’s the structure that gets in the way. I heard the Cabinet Secretary’s reply to Lee Waters’s question, and to the supplementaries, about how allied healthcare professionals can be part of this and that complete understanding that they are willing and ready to take part in different ways of working.
Do you now have enough evidence about partnership working, pooled budgets and all the rest of it from local health authorities, local authorities and from the third sector even—evidence that is strong enough to start developing policy now on a Wales-wide basis, which is predicated on greater numbers and a greater responsibility for occupational therapists, physiotherapists and other allied healthcare professionals, releasing them from this silo of secondary intervention only?