4. Statement by the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Services: Update on Betsi Cadwaladr University Local Health Board

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:43 pm on 5 June 2018.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Mark Isherwood Mark Isherwood Conservative 4:43, 5 June 2018

Okay. Why do you believe that those waiting for more than four hours in A&E has shown a deterioration of 3 per cent over the last two years to what remains, sadly, the worst performing of all local health boards? You referred to management of complaints and concerns. How do you respond to concern not only evidentially from my casework, but from constituents, that we've seen a reversion to risk aversion and legalistic responses when, at the beginning of special measures, there was a positive move towards building bridges with constituents, with patients and ourselves, with round-table meetings to see if we could agree ways forward or resolutions to problems? You refer to the integrated health and social care centres at Flint, Blaenau Ffestiniog and Tywyn Memorial Hospital, and of course in most cases these replaced community hospitals with beds. When will your Government accept that the consequence of stripping out those community beds has put extra pressure on hospitals, our district general hospitals, on our GP practices, and has actually led not to enhanced care in the community, but to enhanced suffering in the community for too many when they can't get the support they previously called for?

You refer to the Tawel Fan HASCAS report, which Darren of course referred to earlier. In accepting that report, why have you apparently dismissed the concerns expressed by North Wales Community Health Council that most of the families they've spoken to over recent months and years have still not received clear answers to their questions and concerns? Why have you accepted the conclusion that care was good and that institutional abuse didn't happen when that's directly contradicted by Donna Ockenden's 2015 report, the Healthcare Inspectorate Wales report in July 2013, internal work on dementia care mapping in October 2013 and many other evidenced reports that previously had been accepted? We know, because—