4. What action is the Welsh Government taking to improve the lives of older people in Wales? OAQ(5)0665(FM)

‘Taking Wales Forward’ contains a range of actions to improve the health and well-being of older people, focusing on timely interventions and effective partnership working. For example, we are investing in initiatives for older people to maintain their independence and remain at home through the integrated care fund.

Thank you for that answer, First Minister, but one of the things you failed to mention was the increasing isolation that has been faced by many older people in Wales. It’s estimated that around 75,000 older people across the country are reported as being very lonely, and that loneliness can have the same sort of impact as smoking 15 cigarettes per day on people’s health. I wonder whether you will join me in supporting Age Cymru’s campaign on loneliness, ‘No one should have no one’. What work is the Welsh Government doing to support people like Gill Stafford, from Abergele in my own constituency, who’s widowed, takes care of her disabled son, and told Age Cymru that she takes the bus just so that she can actually get out and speak to somebody and have a conversation? What action are you taking to support people like Gill and many others who are facing that sort of isolation and loneliness?

We look to work with all third sector organisations who do so much work in helping older people. The Member’s right to say that isolation and loneliness is a particular issue, particularly in these days when families have moved away, and it does have a detrimental effect not just on people’s mental health but, it seems, on their physical health as well. We do want to work with Age Cymru. I commend what Age Cymru are doing to ensure that isolation, firstly, is recognised as a problem, and, secondly, that solutions are found to that problem.

One of the things that we can do to improve the lives of older people is ensure that our dementia strategy is ambitious and genuinely life-changing. As you know, the Cabinet Secretary is currently considering the very large number of responses that the Government has received on this, but I believe this is very much a matter for the whole Government, particularly as I believe it will need extra resource in order to be implemented effectively. What assurances can you give that this will be a priority for you, and that when we have the final dementia strategy, it will be as transformational as we all want to see?

We are committed, of course, to making Wales a dementia-friendly country, and of course to publish the first national dementia strategic action plan for Wales. It will be published later this year. It will set out the key actions with ambitious measures to be delivered by the Welsh Government and external partners to support people affected by dementia, and, of course, there will be a need, as part of that plan, to provide the resource that is required to enable it to succeed.

First Minister, many of our older people are being targeted and fall victim to scammers, who prey on their vulnerability to defraud them of their life savings. I recently helped a constituent who was being targeted, and I have to say the support from South Wales Police was outstanding. Unfortunately, not everyone gets this support. What more can the Welsh Government do to protect and educate older people about the scams, and how to avoid falling victim to these scammers?

No-cold-calling zones are a part of it, but, of course, they, naturally, can’t affect scams that emerge on line or by telephone. I have seen local authorities—Bridgend is one example—that run very successful campaigns through their trading standards departments to inform people of what scams can look like, and they can be very effective, and that campaign was very effective. I saw it myself in Bridgend. Now, it’s important that local authorities learn from each other to see what they can do to protect people from scams that aren’t detectable, through methods such as no-cold-calling zones.