The Integrated Care Fund

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:20 pm on 4 February 2020.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:20, 4 February 2020

I thank the Member for that question. Thank you for the recognition of the work that the integrated care fund has done in the Member's own constituency. I'm sure that she is familiar with the stay well at home service that operates in Merthyr and the work that is being done in the Rhymney valley, through the fund, to improve services for people with learning disabilities.

There is a range of things, Llywydd, that the Welsh Government does to make sure that the lessons of the fund are spread across Wales. We have strengthened the membership of the regional partnership boards in the last year by making sure that housing is directly represented on the board, because so many of the lessons are lessons that are best implemented in collaboration with housing services. We hold an annual event where people from across Wales come together to make sure they share the learning from the fund over the previous 12 months and, as it happens, that annual event will happen on Wednesday of next week.

And we retain a small amount of the integrated care fund revenue funding every year to promote nationally those projects that have been most outstandingly successful at a local level, and where we are sure that that idea, that new initiative deserves to be delivered right across Wales.