Thank you for those questions. I’ll start by recognising, as you did, the great, important strides that we’ve made in terms of improving adoption services in Wales. Also, just to update Members, the National Adoption Service, as one of its priorities, is seeking improvements in life story work and adoption support as well, because we know that those are things that are really important and have a really significant impact on children who’ve been adopted, and the families who adopt them, as well. So, it’s undertaken a root-and-branch review of life story work, leading to an action plan to improve the quality and number of completed life journey stories that children have. Also, we’ve provided significant grant funding to the development of the new framework for adoption support as well, so there’ll be an action plan setting out how this framework will be delivered later on this year, as well.

I’m also glad that you recognise the difference that the intermediate care fund is having. I gave the example of Bridgend, but there are many more and I’m more than happy to share them with Members. Suzy might be interested—particularly in the Western Bay area, the ICF funding supports a specialised nursing team that has consistently improved hospital admission avoidance. So, this year, the service has resulted in 70 admissions being avoided. Other examples are the Pembrokeshire intermediate voluntary organisations team, which improves opportunities for independent living in the community, reducing social isolation for individuals. And, to date, 1,090 bed days have been saved to the NHS and 109 hospital admissions avoided. Just one more, although I do have others: the Cardiff and Vale regional partnership board has implemented a variety of services provided to support independent living, including the health active partnership and the independent living services schemes. To date, the health active partnership has enabled 365 people to remain in their homes and the independent living service has provided 350 interventions, removing 83 people from a life of isolation, as well. So, lots of great examples. Behind every one of those numbers, as well, there’s obviously a story to tell.

One of the things that excites me most about the figures that we’re seeing at the moment is the delayed transfers of care. We’ve had four months now of declining figures, and our figures at the moment are some of the lowest we’ve ever had in Wales, which is absolutely fantastic, especially as we’re in the winter period, still, at the moment. Our figures are now more than 20 per cent down on where they were last year—for the latest figures. It’s too early, really, to make that link completely, but I think it’s certainly a positive sign that the intermediate care fund is making a real difference.

In terms of setting out, I suppose, an understanding of where we are—our starting point—well, under the Act, all of the regional partnership boards have been required to undertake a joint assessment of the care and support needs, including those of carers, within their population areas, and there are regulations that provide for the production of combined population assessment reports on that health board footprint. So, the first of those reports have been published on 1 April, and they provide some real clear and specific evidence bases on which to inform a range of planning and operational decisions for the future, as well. So, I’ll be exploring with Social Care Wales how we can use these regional assessments of population needs to actually create a national assessment of population need as well. I think that’s going to be really important in terms of helping us understand where we move forward with our preventative services, particularly.

The Act also requires the production of area plans, so setting out the range and the level of preventative services that will be put in place in response to those population needs assessments. So, in the first year of the Act, there has been a lot of work going on to try and understand the level of need, and the next phase now is to complete those plans in terms of meeting those needs. And it’s been made very clear in legislation and the guidance, as well, that we have to be focusing on integrated services in terms of meeting the level of those needs.

The citizen has always been at the heart of this legislation, and the citizen is leading the way right across the piece, really, from the individual conversations that the person will have with the people undertaking the assessment, right through to the whole co-production of things on a larger scale. The principles of co-production are actually set out in the code of practice relating to the Bill, and these are: seeing people as assets, building on capabilities, developing mutuality and reciprocity, investing in networks to share information, and blurring distinctions between providers and people who need care and support, and also facilitating rather than delivering the services as well. We’ve put our money where our mouth is by providing funding for the Wales Co-operative Centre to lead on this work, particularly with some work to help local authorities with that duty to promote alternative models of care. I think that there’s a lot to be excited about in terms of not-for-profit organisations, co-operatives and so on, and how they can start meeting the needs of people across Wales as well. Because I do think the more diverse a market that we have in terms of provision, probably the more healthy it is, given our starting point from where we are at the moment, as well.

I’ve dealt with data capture. So, with regard to the UNCRC and the other obligations as well, there’s regular reporting mechanisms from the regional partnership boards to Welsh Government, and obviously we’ll consider all of the duties that the regional partnership boards have, both under that legislation and their wider duties as well, in that reporting mechanism.