The next item is a statement by the Deputy Minister for Social Services on the respite and short breaks fund for unpaid carers. I call on the Deputy Minister for Social Services, Julie Morgan.

Diolch. As we mark Carers Week, I want to pay tribute to unpaid carers throughout Wales, whose everyday efforts to look after loved ones, friends and relatives, particularly during this COVID-19 pandemic, should be respected and valued by us all.

This week, we celebrate the many tens of thousands of unpaid carers who are too often the unsung heroes. They are an integral part of Wales's health and care system and we need to support and help them to look after their own health and well-being. Our recent surveys show that a third of adults in Wales provide unpaid care for one or more hours a week. Carers Trust Wales estimates also that Wales has over 21,000 young adult carers aged between 16 and 24, and over 7,000 young carers aged under 16. Wales also has the highest proportion of older carers and of carers providing more than 50 hours' care a week. 

I think it's very likely that many of us here have direct experience of caring for a friend or family member and know how hard it can be juggling caring commitments alongside work or leisure time. I think the pandemic has raised public awareness of the value of the paid care workforce, but we must make sure that unpaid carers are not overlooked.

Over the last 12 months, I have heard from many unpaid carers who have struggled to cope without their usual support networks and I'm aware that unpaid carers of all ages have faced new challenges, pressures and, in some cases, the loss of a loved one. Unpaid carers have spoken of difficulties accessing timely and appropriate respite and breaks to help them manage their own health and well-being. Respite is no longer just an overnight stay in a care home or an overnight sitting service for the person with care needs; it can take many forms, from having time to switch off and enjoy being with family and friends to a short break with or without the person being cared for. To help address these respite needs, we are providing £3 million in 2021-22 to support emergency respite care and the development of a short-breaks fund.

In the first phase, £1.75 million has been provided to Wales's 22 local authorities to address the pressing need for respite amongst carers of all ages as the coronavirus restrictions are relaxed. In phase 2, £1.25 million will develop more flexible and innovative forms of respite that are tailored to individual need. To inform this work, we have commissioned Carers Trust Wales to work with leading academics to draft a road map towards a national model of respite in Wales. We will also explore how we can work with the hospitality sector to provide a range of short breaks. This model, known as 'respitality', is currently operating successfully in Scotland.

Ensuring that all carers are visible and valued is vital to enable them to access their rights under the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014. We launched a new strategy for unpaid carers in March, reaffirming our commitment to work with stakeholders and unpaid carers to ensure that they have access to the right information, advice and support. The strategy sets out our revised national priorities for unpaid carers, including the addition of a new priority on education and employment. We are currently working with members of the ministerial advisory group for unpaid carers to draft a supporting delivery plan that will set out timescales and metrics for monitoring progress. The plan will be published in autumn 2021. The strategy will build on our recent successes in supporting carers, such as the development of a national ID card for young carers; the swift dissemination of a £1.25 million hardship fund to support carers in financial difficulties during the pandemic; and funding for online psychological support services. 

Four carers projects, funded via the sustainable social services third sector grant scheme, have recently completed their first year in operation and are successfully raising awareness and transforming services for carers across Wales. I have been impressed by the project led by Women Connect First to support older black, Asian and minority ethnic women and carers during the pandemic. Like many third sector organisations, Women Connect First swiftly adapted their model to reach out to unpaid carers, many of whom had not previously received care or support.

Throughout the pandemic, we continued to work closely with unpaid carers and their representatives to understand the impact of COVID-19 on their lives and to take appropriate action. I would also like to thank the Senedd Members who have championed unpaid carers in their local areas. The strategy for unpaid carers, and the supporting delivery plan, is intended to guide partnership working towards a society that recognises, values and supports unpaid carers of all ages and backgrounds to live well and achieve their own well-being outcomes. It's likely that every person in Wales will take on a caring role at some point during their lifetime. So, the action that we take today to support unpaid carers can bring lasting benefits for both carers and the people that they care for, and will also support the future success of our health and social care system.

Plaid Cymru spokesperson, Peredur Owen Griffiths.

Thank you very much, and thank you to you for your statement. I'd like to add my thanks to those heroes that we have—those unsung heroes, those unpaid heroes the length and breadth of Wales—who care for others every day.

Research from Carers Wales shows that unpaid carers looking after disabled, ill or elderly family members or friends have saved the Welsh Government £33 million every single day since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Against that backdrop, the provision of £3 million during the whole of 2021-22—split into two phases, with a first phase of £1.75 million further split between 22 local authorities in Wales—leaves us under no illusion that this is more of a sticking plaster rather than an attempt at a long-term solution.

Carers Wales research also shows that the pandemic has severely affected carers' ability to take a break, which has an impact on their health and well-being. Nearly seven out of 10 carers in Wales say that their mental health has got worse because of a lack of breaks while caring during the COVID-19 pandemic. Sixty-eight per cent of carers said that their physical health has deteriorated during the pandemic. The Deputy Minister explained that this funding is for emergency respite care, mainly for those at crisis point, and gives us little confidence that the Government is fully grasping the central point—that carers should have respite as a matter of course, and should be properly recognised in every context, including financially.

Plaid Cymru has long advocated the creation of a seamless national health and social care service, and for rethinking our approach to health and care delivery, and focusing on prevention. One central access point into such a service would be to do away with bureaucracy and let us focus on the needs of citizens. We must also ensure that we have the levers in Wales to properly reward carers and to allow transformative action, as we would be able to do by seeking the powers to replace the carer's allowance with a universal carer's income—non-means-tested and equal to at least the level of the jobseeker's allowance—for all carers providing more than 35 hours of care. Could the Minister confirm the Welsh Government's position on this particular matter? Is it something that the Government is considering?

You refer in your statement to the fund providing extra flexibility, and that it will develop more flexible and innovative forms of respite that are tailored to individual need. Can you elaborate on this point? I've heard from a number of unpaid carers about their experiences and the need to jump through hoops and fill out masses of paperwork to receive respite care. Can you tell us more about the process for how unpaid carers can access respite services from this fund? Additionally, how many carers are you aiming to reach with this fund?

Figures show that three quarters of carers have received no respite at all. It's one thing to praise the work of unpaid carers, but how many people will this relatively small sum of money reach? And my last question: how will consistency be ensured in the delivery of the scheme, and in the distribution of funding, especially in the absence of a consistent, unified national health and social care model, which Plaid Cymru has long advocated for? Diolch yn fawr.

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.

Conservative spokesperson, Gareth Davies.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer, and thank you very much to the Deputy Minister for her statement this afternoon. I can’t think of a better way to highlight Carers Week than to discuss the support that we give to unpaid carers in Wales. As someone who’s spent their last 11 years working in the NHS and in close partnership with social services, I know first hand that without unpaid carers our health and care system would simply collapse.

While I welcome the additional moneys from the Welsh Government being allocated to fund respite care in Wales, I’m afraid it’s a mere drop in the ocean. Wales has more than a small army of unpaid carers, and they outnumber the British army by 3:1. It is estimated that over a third of a million unpaid carers in Wales save the NHS around £8 billion per year. According to new research by Carers UK, nearly three quarters of Wales's carers have not had a break since the start of the pandemic.

Deputy Minister, do you support my party's pledge that all unpaid carers will receive respite? Does the Welsh Government believe that the £1.75 million allocated to the first phase will be sufficient to meet the needs of Wales's unpaid carers? Will you provide a breakdown on how the moneys will be allocated to each of the 22 local authorities in Wales? I don't expect you to provide that today, obviously, but perhaps you could provide further details to the Senedd in a written statement in the future.

I'm interested in your comments on respite—respitality. I'll put my teeth back in. What discussions have your officials had with the hospitality sector in Wales? Given the losses experienced by Wales's hospitality businesses over the last 15 months, do you believe that this will have any impact on your ability to get the scheme up and running across the nation? Have you discussed the operation of the Scottish scheme with your counterpart in the Scottish Parliament, and have you discussed with the UK Government the potential for a UK-wide scheme?

Moving on to your Government's wider support for unpaid carers, while I welcome the new strategy for unpaid carers, it's disappointing that the delivery plan won't be ready until the end of this year. Unpaid carers need help and support now, not a series of new reports and strategies. My party wants to see unpaid carers given free access to training and ensure that every single carer in Wales receives the carer assessment to which they are entitled. Deputy Minister, do you agree with me that more must be done to support our unpaid carers? What plans does the Welsh Government have to offer training courses to unpaid carers in Wales? Have you discussed with Social Care Wales and Health Education and Improvement Wales the ways in which unpaid carers can train alongside paid carers?

And finally, Deputy Minister, how are you working with Welsh local authorities to ensure that they are providing carer assessments to every carer in Wales? I look forward to working with you over the coming term to ensure that we can truly support our vast army of unpaid carers. Diolch yn fawr iawn.

Diolch. I also look forward to working with you in the shared brief, and thank you very much for the questions that you put forward.

Certainly I welcome the Carers Wales report and the issues that it raises, and the figures that were given about the number of people—unpaid carers—who didn't get any break during the pandemic. I think, obviously, that is a matter of great concern. I did, during the pandemic, meet many unpaid carers and communicated with them, and they certainly told me about the strain that they were under during the pandemic. But, obviously, we have to accept, as they did, that, in many cases, it was their own choice; that they were nervous about having carers in to the home, for example, to help them, because they were so concerned about their loved person they were caring for, that they didn't want to open up the risk of infection. I'm very aware that this has been a huge strain on unpaid carers, and it is one of those awful things that has happened as a result of the pandemic. Will this be sufficient? I think I answered that in my earlier question—that this is an addition to what we are already doing for unpaid carers. It would probably never be enough, but we certainly have said, in our manifesto, that we were going to increase provision for unpaid carers, and this is part of what we're doing to do that.

I have been to Scotland; I have discussed this with the Scottish person who was responsible for the scheme, and I think he makes an important point about the respitality scheme—that, certainly, with the hospitality industry having been through such a difficult time, this may not be the best time to concentrate on that. But that is one of the things we want to look at when it's the right time to do it. Certainly, in terms of the carer assessments, under the Act, every carer is entitled to an assessment. Many of them do not actually take up the opportunity for an assessment because they don't think it's actually necessary, but we need to try and make the awareness of these assessments much more widely publicised.

I very much commend the work that you've done to scope the numbers of young carers, particularly those under 16 years, who obviously are the most likely to be missed unless schools are paying attention. I think your idea of respitality is one that's definitely worth focusing on, particularly outside the normal holiday season. At the moment, obviously, all the hotels and bed and breakfasts are full, but later in the year when others are working and back at school, that might be something that would be really interesting to pursue.

I just wanted to raise the point about older carers, particularly those who were doing over 50 hours a week during the pandemic. There are two groups of constituents who are of great concern: they are older parents looking after an adult with a learning difficulty, and the parent or spouse of someone with dementia. Now, both these groups have just had such a huge burden put upon them by the pandemic when all services have closed, and these people are simply not going to leave their loved ones unless the services are there for them to be able to leave the person who needs care with—who that person is going to be comfortable with. So, I just wondered if you could say a little bit more about how we can accelerate opening up the normal respite and day-care services that previously existed, which have been quite slow to return.

I thank Jenny Rathbone very much for those questions, and I know she has raised with me on many occasions the difficulties that her constituents have experienced, particularly older parents or parents or the spouses of somebody who is suffering from dementia, and I'm very aware of how difficult this situation is.

Obviously, when the pandemic started, the services had to close down for health and safety reasons, and this was a huge blow, I know, to many people who had managed to get a routine going, that, with their loved one being able to go out on a regular basis and come back, they managed to cope, basically, and all this was thrown up in the air when the pandemic struck. So, what we obviously have to do is try to encourage the day services in particular to reopen. So, in order to do that, I have met with the directors of social services to encourage them to reopen the day services. They are beginning to open up all over Wales, but it is patchy, so I am encouraging them and indeed saying that we absolutely must open these services so that people can get a break. I've also discussed it with the Welsh Local Government Association, and I think we're all very aware that this is absolutely crucial that we do offer this provision, so that the parents who have struggled for so long can actually have a break.

Thank you, Deputy Minister, and that brings today's proceedings to a close. Good evening.

The meeting ended at 16:33.