5. Will the First Minister provide an update on the delivery of the integrated care fund? OAQ55058

I thank the Member for that. Across the whole of Wales, the £124 million integrated care fund brings together health, social care and housing services, supports multi-disciplinary working, focuses on innovation, prevention and early intervention, and helps people live their lives in their own way.

Thank you, First Minister. The investment in the integrated care fund and the progress it has delivered, I believe, is a key part of the whole-system approach that Wales needs to meet the demands on hospital and care services. I've seen examples in my own constituency of the fund supporting a more seamless transition between health and care and breaking down some of the barriers that can be a burden both for patients and their families. But as the annual report for 2018-19 makes clear, the lessons that arise and the best practice being delivered must be adopted at pace. So, what further actions can your Government take to ensure the lessons from the integrated care fund are delivered across a wider range of services?

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.

First Minister, last year, I note that the Wales Audit Office found that the impact of the integrated care fund in improving outcomes for service users remained unclear and there was little evidence of successful projects being mainstreamed into core budgets. So, can I ask how has the Welsh Government implemented the recommendations that the Wales Audit Office made, and what work has been done to align specifically the use of integrated care fund capital and revenue funding to provide packages of care that will improve outcomes for service users?

Well, Llywydd, I think that that is a slightly selective reading of the WAO report that had many positive things to say about the fund and the impact that it has had across Wales. Of course it provides recommendations on how things can be done better, and we take that seriously. We wish we had a three-year budget from the UK Government so that we could provide the sort of certainty to service providers on the ground that the WAO report proposed to us.

On the specific issue of aligning the capital and revenue purposes of the fund, just to give the Member one example: in the Gwent area, the capital funding is being used to provide a new five-bedded respite home for children with profound physical and mental health needs. It's doing that because the basis of the fund has been broadened in recent years. As those Members who were part of setting it up will remember, it began very specifically as an initiative to prevent older people being admitted to hospital or to accelerate their discharge. We now use it for a wider range of purposes, including the needs of children with very severe health needs.