4. 3. Statement: The Refreshed Stroke Delivery Plan

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:35 pm on 7 March 2017.

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Photo of Suzy Davies Suzy Davies Conservative 3:35, 7 March 2017

Can I also welcome the new plan, and wish you the very best of luck with that? I’ve got a few questions, beginning, actually, with where Huw Irranca-Davies left off, and the question of the use of scanners. I appreciate you wouldn’t be able to answer this question in the Chamber today, but I wonder if you’d consider making a statement at some point regarding the availability of scanners that don’t have enough people to operate them around the clock. We’re still getting occasional pieces of casework on this—about people turning up at various departments with suspected strokes, and other conditions, where scanners are available, but there’s no-one available to run the scanners. So, I wonder if you can perhaps give us a statement on that, in the future.

But, relating specifically to this now, could I ask you about the stroke survivor six-month review, and the relationship between the NHS and third sector and care workers on this? Now, I’m presuming that, if somebody’s primarily cared for by a member of the family, like so many people are, those family members will be included in any discussions. But, when someone doesn’t have that advantage, and is primarily looked after by care workers, can you give us some indication about who you’d expect to be involved in those discussions? It may well be an individual social worker, if they’re disabled enough as a result of their stroke. But I’m just looking for ways to make sure that nobody is sort of accidentally left out of this useful procedure.

Then I wanted to ask you about the specialist supported discharge service, to enable people with a stroke to receive their rehabilitation at home, or in a care home. I guess that I’m asking, ‘Why isn’t this happening now?’ Delayed transfers of care is a real issue, for a number of reasons, but one of them is that it can be very difficult to get an appropriate package of care together for the individual who’s trying to leave the acute setting. So, can you give us some indication of what’s missing from these delayed transfers of care packages for stroke victims, and perhaps give an indication about whether the ongoing monitoring of the rehabilitation activity that’s enjoyed by that individual will be the responsibility of the acute placement or the primary care team? Because it’s likely to have been designed by the rehabilitation professionals in the hospital setting, rather than in the primary care setting. So, it’s a question just to make sure that, again, somebody takes overall responsibility for that individual, rather than two people either agreeing they’re both responsible or neither taking responsibility.

And then, finally—