I thank you very much indeed for those questions. You began by talking about the population needs assessments, and they’ve been tremendously useful in identifying some core themes, I think, that stretch across all of those population needs assessments. Loneliness and isolation has come out loud and clear as one of those particular areas across all of those population needs assessments, but poverty and deprivation, the importance to individuals of independence, and the importance of building resilience in individuals and communities, they’ve come across as themes in terms of the ways in which we can address the needs that have been identified within those population needs assessments. The needs assessments themselves cover eight core themes: children and young people, old people’s health, physical disabilities, learning disabilities and autism, mental health, sensory impairment, carers who need support, and violence against women, domestic abuse and sexual violence. So, I think they do give us a very robust and clear picture about the needs of those various different groups of people, right across those regional partnership boards. It’s my intention to publish a national population needs assessment based on what we’ve heard from the population needs assessments at a regional level, because they have been so illuminating and so interesting, so I’ve asked Social Care Wales to undertake that piece of work with a view to reporting in November. That’s the aim: to report at that date.

In terms of how regional partnership boards come to an agreement in terms of the pooling of budgets and how much they pool within those budgets, and do they have enough to meet the needs of the people they’ve identified through their population needs assessment, Welsh Government has provided statutory guidance under Part 9 of the Act, which gives an almost step-by-step route to pooled budgets. For example, it starts off with a population needs assessment, but then it moves on to agreeing an appropriate integrated market position statement and a commissioning strategy as a result of that, and agreeing common contracts and specifications, and developing an integrated approach to agreeing the fees with providers, and an integrated approach to quality assurance, whilst at all times maintaining transparency as well. So, those steps along the way should lead to a point where pooled budgets are the next natural progression, and that they’re pooled in a way that is informed and well resourced in order to meet those needs as well. So, those steps have been set out in statutory guidance.

You also asked how we can ensure that the ICF allows innovation, and that was one of the purposes that the ICF was set up for in the first place, in order to give people working in the sector and to give leaders in the health and social care sector the okay, if you like, to try different things and to do things differently. Actually, the ICF was set up to encourage innovation, and actually it was okay if things didn’t work; we could learn from that just as well as we learn from things that do work. So, innovation has always been very much at the heart of that, and there are some fantastic examples, of course. You might be aware of the Pembrokeshire Intermediate Voluntary Organisations Team, PIVOT, which has used £160,000 this year of funding to support timely and effective discharges from hospital, and also to improve opportunities for independent living within the community. To date, within this financial year, 1,320 bed days have been saved and 132 hospital admissions avoided, and there have been 80 supported discharges just within that particular project as well. So, lots of exciting things going on, and people thinking in a very different way.

In terms of workforce planning, again this is something that Social Care Wales has very much engaged with in terms of their new and expanded responsibilities in terms of the development and oversight of the workforce in Wales. They work very closely within the sector and with the regional partnership boards as well.

Finally, you mentioned the private care sector as well, and how we’re ensuring that we recognise the important partners that they are within all of this. Well, the regional partnership boards, through the social services and well-being Act, are mandated to have a representative of the independent sector on each and every one of those regional partnership boards, so that they can give their unique perspective to those boards as well.