Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:46 pm on 16 May 2017.
Thank you for the comments and questions. I’ll start with your point about the diagnosis target. The draft indicates that it’s for the life of the plan. I indicated in my opening remarks that it’s something I’m prepared to keep under review, because I do know that a number of actors and stakeholders wanted there to be a more ambitious target, but I’m determined that we have a stretching but an honest target. I don’t think it would be helpful to set an aspirational target that can’t be achieved in the life of the plan. I want something that is real and achievable, but as I say, stretching, and recognises the need for further improvement. That helps me to deal with your point about the number of staff trained. We’ve set the target already that we think is stretching. What I won’t do today, to get me through a debate, is just pick out of the air a figure of ‘100 per cent of staff’ or ‘the maximum number of staff are, therefore, trained’. But, again, it is something for us to review and to consider as the plan carries on, and as we actually make real progress throughout the life of this plan towards achieving our aims and objectives.
The same goes for anti-psychotic drugs. We are confident that there needs to be a change and a challenge in the way that prescribing behaviour takes place. Each individual clinician has a responsibility for the judgment that they exercise and the care that they provide for an individual within their context. We want clarity on the ability to reduce the inappropriate prescribing of anti-psychotic drugs. But I’m not going to indicate today that there are any particular targets that will be set. That is part of what we need to consider in drawing up and coming to a final conclusion in the action plan. Again, I said that today is, at least in part, a listening exercise to Members about what we’ll actually have in the final plan, to think about whether a target will be helpful—will it get us to a point where we want to be—and then how we can appropriately measure the progress that we do or don’t make on getting different decisions made by practising clinicians.
Then, your final point about substance misuse prevention and recovery. You’ll know that Rebecca Evans leads on substance misuse policy and action for the Government. We’ve maintained investment in this area despite the reductions in the overall budget. That in itself is a marker of the reality that we recognise that this is a really important area, not just in terms of dementia reduction. I go back the points made at the front of this debate about the rise in dementia that we know that we face as a country. Some of that is related to age, but much of it is related to behaviour as well. All of us know that we make choices for ourselves that have a potential consequence. We know from the Caerphilly study, undertaken over a significant period of time on people living in the same sort of communities in Wales, that making different choices on the key behaviours and determinants of healthier outcomes—on smoking, alcohol, diet and exercise—have a significant impact, not just on obesity as we discovered earlier, and will come up later today when I hope that we will pass the Public Health (Wales) Bill, but equally in a whole range of other areas. There’s a significant impact from the choices that we make. Making different choices will be better for us in the here and now and not just for our future. It is one of our big challenges as a nation: whether we can collectively determine that we will make healthier choices for ourselves and for generations to come.