Diolch. Thank you very much for those questions. I welcome you to your post, and I was very pleased to hear you talk about the unsung heroes who are the unpaid carers. I think we certainly share those views.

Certainly, £3 million is not a huge amount of money, but this is in addition to everything else we’re doing. We’re not starting afresh with £3 million. Of course, the main services that unpaid carers should receive would be via the local authority statutory services, and under the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 unpaid carers have the right to have an assessment in their own right, and the local authority then to take up their needs. So, that is the basis of the service that we’re giving, and the non-hypothecated grants that come from the Welsh Government are meant specifically to address particular issues. I wouldn’t want the Member to think that this was all we were doing for respite care; this is in addition to everything else that we’re doing for respite care.

But I absolutely accept that we haven’t been able to reach everybody and that we do require a huge effort, particularly for unpaid carers to recognise the job themselves that they’re doing, because many people do not think of themselves as unpaid carers. They just think it’s the natural thing to do, that this is their loved person, and so this is what they do as a matter of love, really. It's a big thing, and I think one of the themes of this Carers Week is to recognise the visibility of carers, to try to make carers more visible so that they are then aware of the opportunities that are there—but certainly not enough, and I absolutely accept that we do not reach everybody.  

In terms of the other questions that the Member asked, I know that Plaid Cymru are committed to a health and social care service. We are looking at a national social care framework, which we’ll be looking at in this term. Obviously, carer's allowance is not devolved, so that means that we don’t have any of the levers to influence carer's allowance at the moment.

We do want to have more flexible forms of respite, and I think that means we could help carers who wanted, for example, to go to art classes or something different—something that doesn’t follow the traditional form of respite where somebody, perhaps the person who’s cared for, goes away to stay in a home for a period of days. I do think there’s still a place for that sort of respite, but to look at other ways of doing respite. In order to get consistency, we are looking, with Bangor University and Carers Trust Wales, at a fairer system so that we can actually measure the sorts of projects that we’re developing and see how effective they are. So, we’re certainly addressing that issue.

I think that the research is very important as part of this. I also mentioned in my statement the work that Scotland has done. I went to Scotland to have a look at their respite care provision, and they do a lot with respitality, working with the hospitality industry, and we did work with them. They actually give £3 million a year as well to cover these sorts of extra issues, so I’m hopeful we can learn a bit more from them as well as we move into this.