Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd at 2:45 pm on 5 June 2019.
Well, this is a point about whether we require local authorities to provide a service where they have national standards they must meet or whether actually it's a matter for local authorities to make choices on. We do know that, because of the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014, each health board and local authority are due to undertake, or have undertaken, a joint assessment of need in their area and they are then supposed to meet those needs. I would expect that the analysis of local need would properly take account of the communication requirements of people with sensory loss. This is hardly a marginal area of activity, given the statistics on the number of us in this room who can expect in our lifetime to have hearing or sight impairment. So, I expect this to be core business in the way that local authorities run their services.
If the Member does want to write to me and the Deputy Minister with detail of those areas where he does believe there's an inequality in provision, we'll happily look at them and undertake to look at whether there is more that we could do or whether it is a matter for local authorities to resolve issues themselves.