Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:43 pm on 20 November 2019.
Well, I think there are two points there, aren't there? There's one about end-of-life care, which is a significant priority in primary care, which is no surprise given the profile of our population and the numbers involved, and there's much greater engagement and involvement from primary care in providing good end-of-life care—it's part of standard business in primary care, so not just our district nurses and our GPs. There is something there about our end-of-life care work that is definitely about how we deliver that in primary care.
The second point, I guess, is part of what Paul Sartori are also—. I visited them, and it was a very enjoyable and instructive visit too. There's something broader about the way in which we recycle moneys from primary care clusters, and I'll have more to say about funding primary care clusters when we get to some of the detail of the budget. You'll have to bear with me for a relatively brief period of time.
Going back to some of the comparisons made in work in other parts of the UK, we're aware of the work commissioned in Scotland by children's hospices across Scotland to understand their level of unmet paediatric palliative care need and to identify their population and demographic characteristics. NHS National Services Scotland, who undertook that work in 2018, have been invited to the next end-of-life care board in December to see what we in Wales can learn from that work and how best to apply it.
Alongside this, we are working with Tŷ Hafan and other hospices to understand the scale of service and workforce development that will be required to meet future palliative care needs in Wales. So, we continue to work closely with both statutory and third sector partners to deliver on our ambition that I set out to become the world's first compassionate country. To do so, we must be a nation that publicly facilitates, supports and celebrates care for one another during life's most testing times, especially those relating to life-threatening and life-limiting illness, to chronic disability, frail ageing, dementia, grief, and long-term care. Now, with collaboration and co-operation, we will support our communities to become more resilient to be able to cope with the challenges that life brings. And I really am grateful to Byw Nawr and the end-of-life care board for driving the compassionate country work forward in Wales, and I'll be meeting Byw Nawr again in the new year.
All of us, though, in our interactions with public and private sector organisations, can encourage them to embed this approach in everything that they do as well. As Members will know, the end-of-life-care board has been working with Cardiff University, Marie Curie and the Wales Cancer Research Centre to review the level of bereavement services across Wales, and that final report was received by officials and the end-of-life care board last week. They are currently considering the findings. I will provide an update to Members in due course, but I'm happy to confirm that it will be published ahead of the December end-of-life care board meeting, and I'll make sure that's directly provided to Members, as I know there is significant interest across parties in the work of that review. I'm also happy to confirm that I intend to make a Government statement in the new year on end-of-life care and how the information in the bereavement review's work will be taken forward.
So, to conclude, I believe we can be proud as a country of the significant progress we have made to widen access to hospice and palliative care here in Wales, but we know that there is more to do. So, we'll continue to work closely with the end-of-life care board and all of our statutory and third sector partners to make sure that everyone in Wales has access to high-quality end-of-life care in their location of choice.