4. Will the Minister make a statement on staffing levels in community health settings? OAQ55071

The number and skills of community-based, multi-professional health and care teams should be determined by local population need. We expect health boards, local authorities and other service providers to plan multi-professional teams organised around local communities and delivering co-ordinated care and support.

Thank you, Minister, for that answer. Phil Banfield from the British Medical Association recently said it's clear that the latest developments are getting worse, not better. He ended his comments by saying, unless the issue is taken seriously, there's a

'real chance of lives being needlessly lost.'

In between those two statements, he said what's important is that extra beds are put into hospitals, more staff are put on the front line in community settings to relieve the pressures, and additionally, out of the budget process, additional money made available to the health service.

Now, we know additional money has been made available to the health service through the budget process. What commitment can you give in light of these comments from the BMA about additional staff and, importantly, additional beds within our hospitals, so that lives are not 'needlessly lost', as he has said?

Well, I think there's a challenge about where there's space and capacity created within our system. That doesn't necessarily mean those beds have to be within a hospital setting. If you look, for example, at winter capacity, it's been increased; there are bed equivalents in social care. We know a large part of the pressures at the front door of an emergency department in any of our district general hospitals actually comes from the inability to get people out of the hospital and into their own home, or into a different step-up/step-down bed.

We've lost capacity in domiciliary care, which supports people to return to their own homes. We're also facing a real challenge with the the independent sector, which provides most of our residential care as well. So, actually, having more stability within that part of our care system will make a real difference for the health service.

But we are already taking a range of measures on community facilities: the extra investment we're making into district nursing, there have been significant and sustained increases over the last six years in percentage terms; the extra money we're putting into general practice training; the extra money we're putting into pharmacy training as well.

I appreciate you weren't able to attend, but Dr Lloyd, who is now out of the room, hosted a meeting today for the launch of a multidisciplinary working in general practice settings event, hosted by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and the Royal College of General Practitioners, and a report endorsed by both the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy and the Royal College of Occupational Therapists, and the Royal College of Nursing.

So, the approaches we're taking you can already see in different parts of the country. You'll continue to see that investment being made in the future of staff resource, so more people can receive care closer to home, and equally so we get more people out of the hospital when it's no longer the appropriate setting for the care to take place, and for them to be properly supported in their own home in a bed, whether that's in residential care or in their own home in a town or village in the rest of the country.