Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Finance and Local Government – in the Senedd at 1:47 pm on 15 September 2021.

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Photo of Rebecca Evans Rebecca Evans Labour 1:47, 15 September 2021

I think there are two things that we need to do here. The first is to address the immediate pressures that we see within the social care sector here in Wales, which are quite acute now, and you will have heard my colleague, the Minister for health, talking about the impact that has on people being discharged from hospital and so on. So, there's an immediate issue in terms of the social care sector. Part of that is about pay, part of it's about recognition and the kudos of the role. Despite the fact that I think that everybody has woken up to the value of these roles over the past couple of years, we need to make sure that these are roles that people want to go into, which are valued and are valued in the way in which we intend to value through the real living wage, for example. And you'll know that the Deputy Minister for Social Partnership has met with the forum, and asked for the views and recommendations on implementing the real living wage so that we don't do so in a way which destabilises even further the very fragile sector. So, that's the immediate challenge, really, in terms of the workforce.

But that longer term challenge is the one which we were seeking to address through the inter-ministerial group pre COVID, and that was in response to the work which Professor Holtham did in his report, which set out ways in which we could raise funding for social care in the future. And we had a number of additional pieces of work alongside that, which we commissioned, which we published through the course of the last Senedd, which, again, set out potential ways in which we could address the future of care. 

I can assure you that the group has looked beyond how we pay for care and the mechanisms of raising the finance and distributing the finance. It was very much about how we use this opportunity to improve care, improve the experience of the workforce. Because we know that when the workforce feels valued it stays, and when people are seeing the same people every day that gives an improvement to the kind of care and relationships and the outcomes for those individuals. So, I just want to reassure you that all of those points, which you've described, are very much part of the work. It's not just about raising the finance.