I was hoping to make a more comprehensive contribution to this debate today, but the advent of an awful cough means I’m going to have to curtail it, so I don’t treat the Chamber to my epic, hacking cough.

I want to start by welcoming the additional £10 million investment into social care, recognising the additional demands on social care, but we all know how we need to address how we build on this, going forward. As my colleague Dai said, people are living longer. We should, rightly, be pleased about that and celebrate that, but we can’t ignore the consequence—the growing pressure on our services—and we’ll need to do more to work together to deliver innovative services and support against a tight financial backdrop.

I’m proud that my own council of Flintshire retains three in-house care homes, and I had the pleasure of visiting Croes Atti Care Home in my constituency just a few weeks ago and had an opportunity to chat to the lovely residents and day users, as well as the fabulous, hard-working staff. One of the residents I met there was Jessie Joy, who was 100 years young, and when I asked her about the secret of a long life and if there was any knowledge she could impart to me, the advice she gave me was, ‘Don’t show in the window everything you have in the shop.’ [Laughter.]

In all seriousness, though, we are all too aware the cost pressures for care homes and domiciliary care providers are accelerating. I think, going forward, all partners: local authorities, Welsh Government and health boards need to develop new models of public sector-led provision, but we also need to use business support, capital availability and workforce planning to work with the small and medium-sized businesses that provide care. My own authority of Flintshire has led the way on this by funding a project manager to work with homecare and care home providers to make their businesses more sustainable in the medium term, but this also should be a key issue for health boards to address the manner in which they can support care providers.

Whilst in my own experience there’s a lot more help for unpaid carers through the local authority and voluntary sector working together, we also need to build on this work to develop innovative and sustainable solutions to plug the gap that sometimes remains between acute hospitals, community hospitals and other means of respite and homecare. Through the care given to my nan, who is now in her ninetieth year—she probably won’t thank me for telling the Assembly how old she is—I have actually seen at first hand, at the moment and in the previous 18 months, the role that community hospitals play in providing step-up and step-down care. It’s not simply about relieving the pressure on acute hospitals, but it also means that the often elderly patients receive the care they need closer to home and in a less stressful environment.

And on the topic of community hospitals, I must pay tribute to the tenacity and the commitment of the Flint hospital campaign group, a group I committed to work with the representatives of, both prior to the election and since I’ve been elected as Assembly Member for Delyn, to seek a solution that best serves the community today and is sustainable into the future.

I’m grateful for this opportunity to contribute in such an important debate today, and, as my colleague Suzy Davies said, there’ll be further opportunities. I really do think it’s surely one of the most pressing and crucial issues of our time. Diolch.