Part of 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Local Government and Public Services – in the Senedd at 1:50 pm on 28 February 2018.
Thank you, and I'm sure the expert advisory group emphasises that the pressures on the statutory services you referred to add avoidable costs—if we could perhaps do things a little bit differently in terms of early intervention and prevention in this area. One of those areas relates to residential treatment, and particularly respite for people with complex mental health issues who've served in the armed forces. On Monday, your colleague the health Secretary issued a written statement following the removal of veterans' residential treatment facilities at Audley Court in Newport, Shropshire, to which a number of people from Wales have been referred over the years. The statement said:
'The Welsh Government has previously considered the potential for a dedicated Welsh veterans’ residential facility' and you'd commissioned an independent report and that
'concluded that the necessary demand and need to sustain such a facility could not be made out and that community based services were more appropriate.'
In fact, in 2012, the Healthcare Inspectorate Wales report, 'Healthcare and the Armed Forces Community in Wales’, had recommended that the Welsh Government should consider the utility of establishing a form of residential facility within Wales for the armed forces community. This followed the closure of Tŷ Gwyn, which had been packed, in Llandudno, and Pathways, which had opened temporarily near Bangor, which had been packed with unfunded referrals from Wales, not least from the police services. Many members of the armed forces community in Wales had commented on the need for a residential centre for veterans as something you can see, touch and feel, but the Kennedy report, the report referred to by the health Secretary, recommended against that, on terms of reference set by the Welsh Government, concluding there was
'no evidence, nor strong support from the key charities and other bodies working in the field, to warrant a residential facility which supports veterans with PTSD, so long as sufficient capacity exists within existing NHS and Third Sector providers.'
Well, clearly, it doesn't. The evidence is there that that capacity isn't there and, in fact, the third sector capacity has been, sadly, reducing in some areas. So, how will you, or will you at all, revisit the findings of the Kennedy report in the context of 2018 circumstances and look at the overall demand and requirements to meet that demand amongst the armed forces community in Wales?