Part of 3. 2. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Health, Well-being and Sport – in the Senedd at 3:13 pm on 1 March 2017.
I thank you for the question. I understand that you had a very useful meeting with members of the board yesterday, and I think that the advent of Social Care Wales is a really exciting time for the provision of social services and social care more widely in Wales. When I was putting together the membership of the board—and I should say we had unprecedented interest in it, which, again, is really exciting—I was keen to ensure that the board did have a strong balance of people. So, we have service users on the board, we have people from all kinds of sectors that work within social care, to try and ensure that there is a strong and wide expertise and voices on that board as well. So, I’ll be working closely with the board, especially in the early terms, to work on their programme for the future in terms of their programme of work and so on, and to ensure that they are properly resourced to undertake the work that I’ll be asking them to do.
With regard to the parliamentary review, though, I do think it’s unfair to suggest that there isn’t enough expertise in social care on that panel. The members of that panel were chosen because they have such expertise that they can take a whole-system look at health and social care, and the terms of reference have been clear that it is a whole-system approach that we are looking for. Of course, we did set up a specific sub-group as well, which is specifically looking at social care as well, so I do think that social care will be well represented and well considered by the parliamentary review.