4. What action is the Welsh Government taking to increase the number of social care workers in Wales? OQ57301

I thank the Member for that important question, Llywydd. Improved remuneration, free training and professional recognition are amongst the actions being taken, with partners, to help build the social care workforce in Wales.

Data published earlier this month show that the pressure on our health and care system continues to grow. Social care workers play an essential role in supporting the most vulnerable in our communities and help alleviate pressure on their NHS colleagues. I was so pleased to see their hard work recognised by Rhondda Cynon Taf council, which has committed to providing all of its contracted adult independent social care workers, as well as all direct payment recipients, with the real living wage by December.

It's absolutely right that social care workers receive a fair day's pay for a fair day's work. We know that the pandemic has taken its toll on us all, our health and care service and our local authorities in particular. Given this, will the First Minister please meet with the Minister for local government and our local government colleagues to discuss the possibility of providing immediate financial support to local authorities before Christmas to help meet the social care and NHS challenges this winter? 

Llywydd, I thank Buffy Williams for that. She's absolutely right to point to the vital importance of the social care workforce and the pressures that it too is under. There are actions that could be taken to help us to alleviate that. On 12 October, Ministers here, together with their counterparts in Scotland and Northern Ireland, wrote to the UK Government on immigration matters, including social care. I raised directly with the Prime Minister the urgent need to have social care on the shortage occupation list. This is a problem not just in Wales but right across the United Kingdom, exacerbated in England by the loss of, as the UK Government itself estimates, 40,000 workers to the sector on 11 November, when compulsory vaccination became part of the repertoire across our border.

I join the Member absolutely, Llywydd, in congratulating RCT council on moving ahead with paying the real living wage. We'll have more to say about that, of course, when our budget is laid next month. As to immediate help, we published £40 million-worth of additional help in the recovery fund in September; a further £42 million to deal with social care pressures last month; and, by today, we expect to have had all of the plans in from our regional partnership boards for investment from that fund—£10 million to those regional partnership boards where health and social care agencies come together—and hope that those plans will allow us to release that money to them as soon as possible so that they can start making the difference we know the sector needs to see.