7. Statement by the Deputy Minister for Social Services: Rebalancing Care and Support White Paper — Next steps

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:59 pm on 6 July 2021.

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Photo of Jenny Rathbone Jenny Rathbone Labour 5:59, 6 July 2021

Clearly, if we're going to institute a different way of paying for social care, we are going to have to legislate. But, hopefully, the UK Government will come up with something. So, in the meantime, I completely support your focus on commissioning quality outcomes, rights and well-being. I want to just highlight that the third sector are clear that health and social care systems remain difficult to navigate for individuals, and you can just imagine what it's like for somebody who suddenly needs the help of society to support their needs. So, I really want to understand a bit better how we are going to simplify things for the citizen who may need social care. We seem to spend an awful lot of time on creating more structures, and I would like to just remind Members, particularly those who are new to the Senedd, that the Public Accounts Committee, in its report on the well-being of future generations Act, had a really clear recommendation that the

'Welsh Government must not create any new partnership or collaborative structures to fulfil any functions unless it has...explored whether existing partnership structures could undertake those functions instead', or,

'the new structure could replace existing ones'.

We need to do a cull of structures, frankly, because the citizen is absolutely in the undergrowth when it comes to the alphabet soup of structures.

We already have a really clear commitment by the health Minister to bring health services closer to where people live, and we have the successfully piloted neighbourhood nursing schemes. So, I'd really love to know what progress has been made on mainstreaming these self-managed teams, whose mantra is to work in partnership with the people they are caring for and with the other stakeholders surrounding that individual. And I think that was echoed in a report I just happened to have fallen upon from Flintshire, which really focuses on exactly these issues, which is about ensuring that we have local solutions that are really meeting the needs of individuals and local circumstances. So, I'm not quite sure what the role of this national office would be—that seems to be a step in the wrong direction. So, I wondered if you can clarify all of that.