3. What assessment has the Welsh Government made of the barriers in accessing healthcare that affect people with hearing loss? OQ57440

Thanks very much, Joel. The Welsh Government requires NHS organisations to assess barriers to accessing healthcare that affect people with hearing loss in line with the Equality Act 2010. Annual reports are submitted for assessment, detailing achievements made towards implementation of the all-Wales standards for accessible communication and information for people with sensory loss.

Thank you, Minister, and, as you mentioned, the all-Wales standards for accessible communication and information for people with sensory loss policy provides clear guidance on what GPs and hospitals should do to make their services more accessible for people with hearing and sight loss. It aims to make sure people with sensory loss can understand the health information they're given and have access to qualified British Sign Language interpreters or other forms of communication support during NHS appointments. Disappointingly, patients with sensory loss have reported to the group Action on Hearing Loss Cymru that they're not seeing the increased accessibility they were promised.

In 2018, a Welsh health circular stated that all relevant staff must be made aware of their responsibilities for recording such information, in order to support individuals with information and/or communication needs that are related to or caused by sensory loss. However, a Social Care Institute for Excellence survey found that, in Wales, more than half the people surveyed still leave their GP surgery unclear about their diagnosis or how to take their medication. In addition, 42 per cent of deaf BSL users say that communication at their appointments is inadequate because they don't have an interpreter and 36 per cent of survey respondents have to travel to their GP to book an appointment in person as they can't use the phone. With this in mind, would the Minister outline what action they intend to take to make sure that local health boards have mandatory induction training on sensory loss for NHS staff? And will the Minister outline what the Welsh Government proposes to do to enforce implementation of the current policy? Thank you.

Thanks very much, Joel, and it's disappointing to hear what you're setting out there. I know that officials are currently assessing the most recent submissions against those criteria that we set out in those all-Wales standards for communication and information for people with hearing loss. What those standards do is set out what every patient or service user should expect from those standards. And obviously I am concerned if we're not meeting those standards. So, presumably that will come through when those submissions are assessed. So, I'm just waiting for those. They then are going to report their findings to the NHS Wales national executive board and the NHS delivery framework board. And the idea then is to discuss any concerns they have in terms of the implementation of standards with those appropriate organisations, and if you're saying that there's a particular problem with GP surgeries, then obviously we'd expect that to come out in those assessments.

I guess that actually the move to online may be helpful in this regard, that the eConsult process should be easier for people with hearing loss in terms of being able to access GP surgeries. But the key thing is that we do need to learn from best practice, so I'll look forward to seeing that assessment and those submissions when they come in.