9. Statement by the Minister for Housing and Regeneration: Integrating Housing, Health and Social Care

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 7:02 pm on 26 June 2018.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Rebecca Evans Rebecca Evans Labour 7:02, 26 June 2018

Thank you very much for those questions. I'm glad that you began by acknowledging that it's important that we don't work in silos in this regard. I think it's important that the Welsh Government shows leadership in terms of being able to work across traditional boundaries, especially when we are asking local authorities and health boards to do difficult things, including pooling budgets through the social services and well-being Act, and that's one of the key roles of the regional partnership boards, because making effective use of resources is a key priority for those boards. Those pooled funds and improved integrated commissioning will result in greater resilience in the provision of services, with a focus on improved quality and not just better value for money. 

We have been assured that all regional partnership boards are now delivering a form of pooled funds in relation to care homes for older people. We want to ensure that there are fully formed pooled funds in place that deliver effective joint commissioning by April of next year. And the Minister has made it clear that we will consider intervening directly if that's not the case. So, yes, it's important that the Welsh Government shows leadership and I think we've done that through 'Prosperity for All', which recognises housing and social care as two of our five cross-Government priorities, and we recognise that there are roles for all of us across Government to be working together on these agendas; it's certainly not one person's responsibility to be delivering.

Are we building enough bungalows? No, definitely not. I was really pleased yesterday to visit the new development in Maesteg with my colleague Huw Irranca-Davies. They are building new bungalows there and that's really exciting, because, actually, we don't have enough bungalows being built. I was talking to developers as to why, and they're often seen as being quite inefficient in terms of building them, because they are, per square metre, more expensive to build than other houses. But, equally, bungalows really do meet the needs of older people who need to be living on one floor, for example, and who need a fairly small property to be looking after. So, I would like, certainly, to see more bungalows being built, and the ones that were being built yesterday were being built through a housing association, with the specific aim of supporting people to live in those accommodations, as part of their social housing offer within the local area. So, I think that it's important that that's considered by registered social landlords, for example, as they're thinking of their forward work programme, and also by local authorities as they're considering their local housing needs analysis, for example.

In terms of priorities and how regional partnership boards will know where to be focusing their efforts, alongside a letter to regional partnership boards today as a result of this statement, we're also issuing programme guidance for this fund. So, there should be no doubt in terms of the minds of regional partnership boards as to where we would want to see that funding deployed. 

I completely agree that the use of new technologies provides us with real opportunities to support people to live at home for longer, and to monitor people's care needs, and monitor people's health, and so on. That was reflected in some of the answer that I gave to Dai Lloyd. 

Again, I think building the right homes is also about building communities, and that very much speaks to that point that you made about tackling loneliness and isolation, which we know is becoming a growing concern for many older people, but not exclusively older people, across Wales. So, building homes that are also communities, such as the one we saw yesterday, I think is a wonderful way of being able to tackle that as well. 

In terms of the groups that this funding is intended to support, those groups are set out through the social services and well-being Act, and they are: older people with complex needs and long-term conditions, including dementia; people with learning disabilities; children with complex needs due to being disabled or illness; and carers and young carers. So, those groups are specifically set out through legislation. 

We do have a very strong link between the dementia action plan and the regional partnership boards' work. The plan focuses on what service users with dementia and their family members have told us was particularly important to them, for example, timely diagnosis, and then the provision of person-centred care following that diagnosis. The implementation of that plan is being supported by £10 million of Government investment, £9 million of which has been allocated to the regional partnership boards through the integrated care fund mechanism, so aiming to drive forward and enable integrated working between social services, health, housing, the third sector and independent sectors to support people with dementia and their carers. To support this, we have issued addendum ICF guidance that was produced specifically with the dementia action plan in mind.