7. Statement by the Minister for Health and Social Services: Update on the Amber Review Implementation Programme

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 6:45 pm on 4 June 2019.

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Photo of Vaughan Gething Vaughan Gething Labour 6:45, 4 June 2019

I don't think the capacity and demand review, or indeed the mapping exercise, is entirely related to co-responders at all, actually. It's about understanding properly across the whole service, having introduced a new clinical response model, having had a variety of methods to look at piloting different ways of running the service—to understand what exists in different parts of the country, and what has the best evidence to actually succeed. Now, some of that may well be about making better use of community co-responders and other organisations. We're looking at the falls unit that I mentioned in the statement as well. We've had falls pilots looking at different models to deliver a falls service. So, it is about understanding where is the evidence and how do we get more consistency. And the fire and rescue service could be part of that, but it's not about a lack of willingness or a lack of desire to want to have a relationship with the fire and rescue service. It is about how do we make the best use of people's skills and ability, in terms of value for the public purse and understanding what the role map and the contractual ability is to deploy fire and rescue staff in a different way. Because there is a difference of opinion with representatives of the workforce in the fire and rescue service as to whether or not their role and their contractual responsibilities mean they could and should be required to act in this way. Now, we're open, from a health point of view, to having a proper partnership with the fire and rescue service, to understand the cost of that and the value of that, even more importantly, but it does require some progress on the fire and rescue side as well. I personally think that it would help to bolster numbers and maintain head count within the fire and rescue service, but of course we have to respect the fact that there are negotiations taking place with representatives within the workforce, as well as our understanding of how public value is properly deployed.