Part of 2. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd at 2:40 pm on 31 January 2018.
Thank you very much. Just to be clear, the figures that I have on the element of match funding are not the same. It certainly isn't 44 per cent. Of the £7.15 million funding to the regions to deliver social care training by Social Care Wales, I'm informed that 25 per cent of that—so, a quarter of that—is match funded by local authorities. But I'll go away and look at that figure of 44 per cent, because that certainly isn't anything that has been brought to my attention. So, yes, indeed, if the Member could send that to me I'll have a look at it. But, as she knows, within that, the priorities this year have included care and support at home, they've included recruitment and retention, career development and the implementation of the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014.
I'm grateful as well to the Member for raising those important issues of the work that we have to do on workforce training, because actually getting people to see that this is not only a valuable profession but a profession in which they are valued means we put the investment into the training, and it is a shared ownership of this. It is a shared partnership in this through local authorities and Welsh Government. We are putting the money in. There is an expectation with the match funding that local authorities will also step up to the mark. But, of course, we'll keep this under review as well. But there is a significant portfolio of work now going on in this area, and I am constantly, whenever I visit front-line social care workers, stressing to them the importance of the work, but also the necessity of us as Assembly Members, of us as Welsh Government, and also local authorities and everybody else, to really value and speak out about the value of this work, because we know it is truly the coalface in terms of our interface with some very vulnerable individuals.