3. Will the Cabinet Secretary provide an update on the extent of injuries caused by dog bites treated in Welsh hospitals? OAQ(5)0210(HWS)

The latest published information for 2015-16 shows 525 hospital admissions across Wales for patients bitten or struck by a dog.

I thank the Cabinet Secretary for that information. I understand from the Communication Workers Union that there’ve been 1,750 days lost by Royal Mail staff across the UK during the last year due to dog attacks. There’ve been some terrible injuries to postal staff including fractures, tendon damage, and even amputations. So, I’m grateful that we have those Wales-wide figures, because would he agree that having the figures from the health service will be a help in contributing to assessing the overall picture and informing the view of what actions need to be taken in order to address this growing problem?

Yes, I do agree, and I want to pay tribute to both Julie Morgan and her constituent Councillor Dilwar Ali, for the approach they’ve taken, not just for the individual that’s affected and his family, but actually in seeing a wider issue to campaign on and improve, both for members of the wider public as well as, in particular, postal staff who are largely members of the CWU.

This is not, if you like, a laughing matter, where the postie gets a nip and that’s just part of the job; actually this is a real and serious issue. People have real harm caused to them, and not just physical harm, but actually it affects someone’s willingness and ability to do their job. I know that the postal service spend a significant amount of time in trying to identify where there are likely to be dogs that are not controlled and the ability to provide mail to that house and to make sure that workers are properly protected.

So, I’m happy that the health service has provided information to help understand the scale and the nature of the problem, the cost to the public purse, the cost to the individual, and the improvement that all of us need to be a part of making. I know that politicians who wander around the country in elections have a small example of what postal workers undertake and the difficulties they face on a regular basis.

Indeed, Cabinet Secretary, you’re talking to one of the politicians who suffered so only last May. I had a very bad bite on my hand, thanks to a random dog, and had outstanding service at Withybush hospital A&E, who performed a lengthy but significant operation to repair my hand. But above all, I was able to return home and, for the rest of the week, I received treatment three times a day from the acute response team. Indeed, many of my constituents have had the acute response teams respond to them. This is a time-limited, acute nursing intervention for patients within the community to prevent them from having to stay in hospital. One of my constituents had septicaemia and had the acute response team come out to him and look after him, I think, four times a day actually.

Cabinet Secretary, could you just give us an overview about the acute response teams and what we might be able to do to promote their use throughout Wales? Because they are a very good way of ensuring that people are not having to stay in beds, freeing up beds for other people, and giving them community treatment in their homes, where they want to be, and they wouldn’t be able to stay there without such a great initiative as an acute response team, such as the one in Hywel Dda.

Well, it’s a good example of the fact that within each of our health boards there are examples of real excellence, and the drive is to have more care delivered closer to home, which means people don’t need to stay unnecessarily within a hospital setting. Again, the point is that significant areas of activity that would previously have been undertaken by doctors are now undertaken by different staff. Having a nurse-led intervention is a good example of, and another example of, the sort of reform we want to see in our service, delivered progressively, that isn’t about bricks and mortar, but is about how we make better use of our staff in different settings. I think it’s what we need to do, and there is an expectation within the public, and I think there’s a real desire amongst the staff themselves to design new models of care to do just that.