The next item is a statement by the Minister for Children, Older People and Social Care on transforming social care in Wales: the implementation of the Regulation and Inspection of Social Care (Wales) Act 2016. Huw Irranca-Davies.

Thank you, Dirprwy Lywydd. Since April 2016, we have seen the embedding of the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 across Wales. I see good progress in some areas, and on the other hand I see that there is more to be done in others. In moving forward, I want us to focus on supporting all services to reach the best standards. To date, there are three things that are cause for encouragement.

The Llywydd took the Chair.

Firstly, I hear our stakeholders such as the older people’s Commissioner telling us that our statutory framework is broadly the right one, although only if we ensure that it is properly implemented. Secondly, I see for myself that the structures we tasked our partners to put into place, such as regional partnership boards and the safeguarding boards, are becoming embedded in our landscape of delivery in Wales. And I hear partners talking about the value that they bring. And thirdly, I have noticed, and continue to see day to day, the real commitment that staff and stakeholders from all parts of the sector have brought and continue to bring to this agenda. Whether it is helping to shape the statutory framework, challenging us to make sure we are heading in the right direction, or working hard to bring our shared aspirations to fruition, their effort is vital and it is ever-present. I look forward to the new impetus provided by the parliamentary review and our response to it, the long term plan, helping to take us further along this road of transformation.

Now, we've always been clear that this is a journey that we want to take with our stakeholders, with our social care staff and with our citizens, together. We've also been very clear that it will only be successful if all stakeholders and parts of the sector are co-operating and working together. And that does not just apply to the hands-on delivery of high-quality care and support, and the vital back-room functions of planning, commissioning and co-ordination that will make it happen. It also applies to how we value, regulate and support our workforce, to how we galvanise the sector to improve quality and become even better at supporting people to achieve their well-being outcomes, and to the crucial question of how we give public assurance that the sector is a safe, nurturing place for individuals who receive care and support.

Our Regulation and Inspection of Social Care (Wales) Act 2016, the companion to the social services and well-being Act, is the mechanism for addressing that key set of challenges. I'm therefore pleased to update you today on our progress with this aspect of the transformation journey. We are now into the third phase of implementation of the regulation and inspection Act. Since Royal Assent in January 2016 we have seen workforce regulation entirely changed, we've seen Social Care Wales stepping into a new quality improvement role, and now we see the regulation and inspection of care itself shifting to a new focus on outcomes.

In phase 1, in 2016-17, we worked with the sector to shape the arrangements by which service providers could register with Care Inspectorate Wales and shared our thinking about what information providers should, through their annual returns, put into the public domain.

In phase 2, in 2017-18, we worked extensively with our stakeholders and Care Inspectorate Wales to develop those service standards that will apply to care homes, secure accommodation services, residential family centres and, indeed, domiciliary support services as well. This Assembly agreed those requirements last December and I am very pleased that CIW, starting last month, are now in the process of registering our major groups of providers in the residential and domiciliary care sectors.

So, I now turn to phase 3, which covers adoption, fostering, adult placement and advocacy services. These services have their own distinct special features and complexities, which is why my predecessor in this post, Rebecca Evans, resolved to allow a longer development process and a staged implementation. I am very pleased to acknowledge here the commitment and the energy that stakeholders interested in these sectors have devoted to working with us to help shape those requirements. You should expect to see consultations relating to fostering, adult placement and advocacy services launching imminently, to be followed by a consultation on adoption services in the early autumn. And, subject to the agreement of this Assembly, I hope to see registration opening and the standards we have consulted on applying to service providers in these critical areas from April 2019.

But, our journey does not stop there. It continues further into the future, because the market stability provisions in the Act will be developed over the next year, to come into operation in 2020. These will add another layer to our arrangements for understanding the local and, in turn, the national care market, to support good planning, good commissioning and management. At the same time, domiciliary care workers will be required to register with Social Care Wales as the workforce regulator. This is being facilitated by our recent decision to allow voluntary registration for domiciliary care workers from this year. Similarly, registration for residential care workers will become mandatory in 2022, following a two-year voluntary registration period. These are important parts of our valuing the workforce agenda, giving these vital workers the protection, the recognition and the support accessible through registration. Underpinning all of this work will be the lessons of review and evaluation, in the shape of a formal evaluation of the social services and well-being Act, to be tendered for shortly, together with suitable and proportionate arrangements in respect of the 2016 Act further down the line.

In concluding, I would like to thank you for your support and your insightful scrutiny thus far. We all have an aim in building a sustainable system of social care here in Wales, which respects and values the people it supports, and helps them to achieve their personal well-being outcomes. We can only achieve this by engaging the energy of policy makers, staff and stakeholders in the social care areas as well as citizens and their representatives. Thank you very much. 

Diolch ichi, Weinidog. Thank you for the update and an indication of next steps. I suppose my first question is the obvious one, which is: when is your consultation going to be launched? If you can give us something a bit more detailed rather than 'shortly', I think we'd all be grateful. Similarly, when is the tender likely to go out for the evaluation of the social services and well-being Act, rather than the regulation and inspection Act?

Perhaps you can help me with just a few of these questions, though. The recent regulations, which basically implemented the regulation and inspection of social care Act in care homes, secure accommodation and domiciliary support services—we only passed those regulations a few months ago, I accept that, but I'm wondering whether, as CIW is already involved in the registration process now, you're getting any anecdotal feedback—I think I'd better call it that at this stage—about difficulties in implementing those regulations and whether care homes in particular are coming across unexpected difficulties that perhaps they hadn't anticipated, which of course I accept they'd be helped through rather than be punished for that. But, it would be quite useful to know if something unlikely or unexpected has occurred for those that are being registered now. 

With regard to the domiciliary care sector in particular, one of the reasons why domiciliary care workers fell out of the regulatory regime, if you like, several years ago was the issue of CPD and professional development as much as anything else. As you know, it's a very high-turnover area, where there are lots of people jumping at the chance to go straight through the pipeline then through to healthcare and public sector social services care, if they get the chance. So, with the voluntary registration—again, I appreciate it's early days—is there any way of telling at the moment whether the prospect of being able to move on from zero-hours contracts in some cases, or indeed of getting Social Care Wales-approved qualifications, is having any effect on retention? As I say, I recognise that this might be quite difficult to answer. Or, is there any evidence that the requirement for registration and CPD, if you like, is prompting any early exits?

Regulations for phases 1 and 2—are we going to be getting any further guidance or, in fact, any further regulations on the first two phases? I don't know whether you can answer that today. In respect of adoption and other placement services, which are what we're talking about now—phase 3—I wonder whether you can take this opportunity to make it clear that you'll be resisting some voices that are being heard through campaigns at the moment against private and charitable agencies. That sort of request, if you like, would fly very much in the face of the recommendations of this Assembly—sorry, the fourth Assembly—where the children and young people committee strongly endorsed the retention of those agencies, and agencies generally. Obviously, we've no objection to you clarifying and improving standards there, but I hope that you will be looking to expand provision of these services that we're talking about in phase 3, not restricting them.

Finally, do you anticipate that the regulations emerging from this new consultation will include standards for the much-needed post-placement support offered by these agencies, including adoption? Just because you've ceased to become a looked-after child doesn't mean that the family and the child cease to need any support. So, I'm hoping that that particular aspect of the standards won't be overlooked. Thank you.

Suzy, thank you very much for that series of questions. Let me turn to them one by one. First, have we picked up with regard to the drive towards increasing standards in residential sectors—is it having any impact, anecdotally? I am having the occasional piece of correspondence or representation from individual Assembly Members, which the care inspectorate is trying to deal with sympathetically. I know I convey any concerns from individual Members directly to them and have a look at it myself. They will try to deal very sympathetically on the ground with this.

But, of course, the regulations that we've been driving towards have been a long time coming as well. They've tried to work very constructively with individual care homes, some of which are smaller, coming from a more traditional set, perhaps in a rural area as well, where we can least afford to lose good care home provision. CIW are very conscious of this and are very keen to work with those homes to make sure that they can meet the new standards. But, what they will not do—and I know that you'll understand this, Suzy—is sacrifice the standards that this Assembly has actually agreed on that we need to drive towards—so, those things such as having a 15 per cent maximum on the amount of shared accommodation within a home, and that shared accommodation should be by agreement by the individuals who are sharing it. Things like that—the move towards en-suite facilities et cetera, et cetera. All of these have been quite some time coming. There are occasional anecdotal reports or otherwise, brought to me by Assembly Members, or the odd letter that says, 'We're struggling to meet it', and CIW will try to encourage those homes, then, to work with them, but we have to meet those standards, because at the end of the day these are the outcomes to do with those individuals within those areas.

You mentioned the impacts of registration. It is a little bit too early to say yet in detail. We're at the stage where we know that we have people coming forward and voluntarily registering now, which is fantastic—that's what we want to see. It's part of this transition from voluntary to mandatory registration, but it's probably too early yet. As soon as we can see what impact that is having, as part of the overall uplift of the value of those workers, to try, indeed, to encourage them to stay in this as a profession, as a career—. Part of that, as well, is what we do with the qualifications and workforce strategy development generally, and it was interesting that only recently—I think in the last two or three weeks—we announced the level 2 qualifications that were health and social care, very much in line with our thinking that what we want to do is pathways that cross across these disciplines, so that people can see there's a career, not simply an opt-in or opt-out job there. 

The private charitable independent sector, and also, I have to say, the social enterprise sector, are part of our vision for a diverse sector that can underpin a resilient sector, both within residential care but also within domiciliary care, alongside in-house provision as well. So, we certainly do not see them as anathema to the sort of vision we have for improving quality of care across the piece—they are part of that process. And I'm encouraged, actually, by the way that the independent charitable sector and the social enterprise sector have really engaged with this alongside other stakeholders, and are fully supportive of it. 

On the issue of post-placement support, well there is scope within what we're doing to go further. It's interesting if you look at, for example, the complexities around moving to regulation of adoption services or advocacy services. These are complex areas. Post-placement support in adoption is one of those areas that we can actually encompass within these regulations, but we're testing it on others first, learn the lessons and then we'll be coming back again, I'm sure the Assembly will be glad to hear, to do it.

Finally, if I can touch on the aspect you first turned to, which is the timescales. So, the draft regulations—I can't give you a precise date, but it is very shortly that we'll be consulting on the draft regulations in respect of fostering, adult placements and certain advocacy services for children. And then in terms of the adoption, because of the complexities around that we will consult later, probably in the early autumn, on that, but with a view to actually bringing forward all of these together for implementation in the spring of 2019. So, even though one set will be slightly delayed in consultation, our intention, subject to agreement of the Assembly, is to bring them all together for implementation.  

Can I thank the Minister for his statement: transforming social care in Wales—implementation of the Regulation and Inspection of Social Care (Wales) Act 2016, RISC? Can I first of all thank him for being willing to listen and to engage with various issues I've had with the regulatory mechanisms as they have been unfolding, and I'm grateful for his meetings and for his advice? 

In terms of the statement, obviously, this refers to the implementation of the regulation and inspection of social care, and it focuses a lot on the registration of care support workers and providers. Obviously, registration of care support workers is a very welcome step. Doctors are registered, nurses are registered, and it's only right that care support workers, increasingly involved in the most intimate of personal care, should also be registered. And, obviously, those processes are part of an obvious requirement in improving the outcomes in social care that we all want to see. 

But obviously the elephant in the room here is that you can't achieve all this whilst care support workers are low paid, still subject to casualisation, occasional zero-hours contracts, and that they don't have proper career paths that would lead to the equality of esteem that health professionals do have. Now, changing this requires significant increases in the wage and training bills at a time when local authorities can ill afford to do so. So, can you tell us, Minister, this afternoon, how the Government is putting its money behind this Act, and will you accept that the implementation of the spirit of the Act requires this injection of significant funding? Transforming social care demands no less.     

Thank you very much, Dai. 

First of all, can I thank you and other Members who've come to me with details of individual providers who may be facing difficulties in meeting the challenges? Hopefully, we've taken a proportionate but sympathetic view and tried to put them in touch with the right people to help them along the way. So, I thank you and others for continuing with that, and also for your support for the registration process. I know this has been quite a challenge, particularly for the domiciliary care sector, because this is entirely new. But, to be honest, exactly as you say, Dai, we should be saying to the workforce, 'We value you, and part of that valuing is professionalisation of what you do, recognising it. Registration is part of that process; it's not the silver bullet, but it's part of it, and then the continuing professional development, then the NVQs, then the process of crossing across from health and social care in that seamless way.' We're having good feedback, I have to say, from both the agencies out there but also from individual front-line workers on it. We took a proportionate approach to it. We didn't set—. We've done it voluntary first, moving to mandatory; we consulted extensively on how we should set the fee, because this is the first time that there would be a fee in the sector, so we think we've set that right and so on.

But you also rightly point out on this issue that it's not simply about saying that we value the workforce and professional development and so on; it's how we value them monetarily in terms of their pay packet, what they take home at the end of the week. Now, we've already started to move on this. So, on the zero-hours issue, we've already said that, through phase 2 of this, what we will be doing is saying that, if you have a three-month contract where you are on regular hours, you have the right to be entitled to a regular contract for that. It seems absolutely common sense, I have to say, to people out there. This is one of the areas that is within our gift as an Assembly and as Welsh Government to effect, so we have taken that through already and I look forward to that being taken forward.

And, by the way, we have from the sector—the sector will say that this is a challenge for them, but they also acknowledge that it's the right challenge to have, because if they value their workforce they want to also say to them, 'You are a full-time employee with us, not casual, not zero hours and so on.' We've also moved, of course, on the issue of call clipping, that old shibboleth where people would be paid only for the time that they were actually there as a domiciliary care worker and not the time they were travelling back and forth. We've dealt with that in the phase 2 regulations as well, and we'll keep on going.

But you are right in saying that underpinning this is the overall issue—bearing in mind what we know is happening with the population by 2036. Studies will tell us that we will have a doubling of the population that is over 85 and a significant increase—over 30 per cent—of those who are over 60, bringing with it the complex care needs that they have. Is there sufficient in the system? One of the things we have done—. There is no magic money tree, but we have here in Wales invested in—I'm looking to my colleague in front of me on the bench, and as I say this I'm reminding him of the importance of it as well, of course—. The fact is that we have actually increased in Wales by 5 per cent in cash terms over the last five years the money going into the social care sector, compared to, I have to say, cuts of around 10 per cent across Offa's Dyke on the other side. It hasn't solved everything but it's helped us to do some of these things and to work in partnership with it.

Some of the market stability things that I alluded to in phase 3 in terms of the stability of the sector will help as well, but going forward, of course, you will note that I have been put in the position of chairing, taking forward the work that the finance Secretary has done with Professor Gerald Holtham on the concept of a social care levy. This will take some time to work through, but I'll be chairing the inter-ministerial group looking at that, looking at the complexities of it, to see whether there is both the public appetite and the political appetite and logistically whether it can deliver an alternative approach to lever additional funding into the system, knowing those huge population challenges that are facing us.

But even with what we've got now, Dai, I think we can do some great things here with the powers we currently have, regardless of what we might do in the future. 

Thank you for your statement, Minister. The Regulation and Inspection of Social Care (Wales) Act 2016 and the wider Social Services and Well-Being (Wales) Act 2014 are amongst the greatest achievements of this institution. The RISC Act should ensure that the appalling abuse exposed by Operation Jasmine can never happen again. We are ensuring that all those who work in the care sector have the necessary skills and training and ensuring that service providers are fit and proper to undertake that provision. This is truly a journey of transformation, and as we enter its third phase, I would like to put on record my thanks to all those working in social care for the positive approach to this transformation.

I look forward to working with you, Minister, to deliver all the improvements envisioned in the Act, particularly the market stability provisions. As we look to the future, unfortunately more and more of us will be reliant on care. A healthy and vibrant care home sector will be essential. Minister, ahead of the implementation of the market stability provisions, what assessments, if any, have been made of the current state of the care home sector?

Finally, Minister, I welcome the decision to allow voluntary registration of residential care workers from 2020. So, can you tell us what proportion of the domiciliary care workforce has chosen to voluntarily register?

Once again, I thank you for your ongoing work, and that of your predecessor, Rebecca Evans, to deliver improvements to social care in Wales, and would like to assure you that you have my support in transforming social care in Wales. Thank you. Diolch yn fawr.

Thank you very much. Thank you, Caroline, and thank you as well for the recognition that you made there very clearly of those who work within the sector. Too often, you only see the bad headlines when they hit, and we forget about the army of people out there who are doing tremendous work every single day. So, thank you for that.

You remind us as well of how far we've travelled with the backing of this Assembly for a different approach towards how we provide social care and well-being and quality-of-life outcomes for individuals in Wales—in difficult times as well, but we are changing the whole landscape of how we deliver social care.

It's too early, I have to say, as I mentioned to Suzy as well, to give any feedback on the voluntary registration for domiciliary care, but I anticipate that sometime in the autumn we'll be able to give an update on how many people are availing themselves of that, and I'll come back to the Assembly with that.

If I turn to the issue of market stability, the Welsh Government are going to be working with Care Inspectorate Wales and other stakeholders to develop regulations in terms of market stability and financial oversight of service providers of regulated services, with an intention to implement arrangements from April 2020. Now, we've decided—or I've taken the decision—to implement these provisions from April 2020 as this actually coincides with the completion of the re-registration of existing providers under the new system. So, this provides a good opportunity, a nice synchronicity there. The nature of the care market may change as well as a result of this process. For example, some providers may use this, this process, as part of an opportunity to restructure or to merge the current portfolio of services. So, it's probably prudent to allow enough time for these changes to take place and to learn from them.

It also allows us the opportunity to consider how market stability reports required under the Act will align with our population assessments, which I mentioned, and our area plans under the 2014 Act. But in the meantime, that's not all—there are a number of interim measures in place to support market stability. So, Care Inspectorate Wales will go on doing the work it currently does to gather intelligence on care providers, which can, and is, shared with local authorities as necessary, in terms of contingency planning and so on. And it's also looking to prove its oversight of larger providers through link officers and seeking to improve intelligence sharing with other social care regulators throughout the UK.

And finally, on that market stability, it's a critical issue, because we know the stresses within the providers at the moment—big and small. The Regulated Services (Notifications) (Wales) Regulations 2017, which came into force this April, prescribes specific notification requirements on social care providers. So, through enabling Care Inspectorate Wales to share key information about changes to providers, these regulations give local authorities notice of key changes affecting the market in their areas, and it can better inform decisions when planning and commissioning future services. So, we can do things now, as well as looking to the future as well.

Thank you, Minister.