Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:49 pm on 25 January 2022.
Thanks very much, Mark. Can I thank you for your personal commitment to this very important area? I can't imagine the pressure and the difficulties that so many families have had to face during this extremely difficult time. It's hard enough to lose a loved one at any point, but to try and deal with this in the middle of a pandemic must have ben extremely difficult, in particular, I think, when it comes to children. So, thank you for your contribution and thank you for your focus on this. Thank you for recognising that we have given £14 million to the sector to make up for some of the loss that they saw during the pandemic, and for recognising that additional £2.2 million, which I can confirm will be recurrent.
I am glad to see that you recognise that we've corrected some of the underfunding that was happening, and that's why we made sure that we undertook this review and that we placed a different priority on it. There's a broader review, but we went first for the immediate need to fill the funding gap. It was those experts who came up with the suggestions in terms of where that should land. I'm pleased to say that we've landed more or less in the same place as England when it comes to children's hospice funding, although I think it's really important, when we talk about voluntary hospices, that we're not comparing apples and apples here with England. Because, for example, in Wales, some of the hospices benefit from clinical support, such as palliative medicine consultants, and that's not necessarily the case in England. It is a slightly different way of dealing with the situation. So, thank you for that.
Of course we will be monitoring how this funding is spent, and of course we will make sure that the health boards are really ensuring that they're looking at what the need looks like within this space. I'm very pleased to see that one of the things that's been recognised here is the fact that, actually, ideally, people want to die at home in the comfort of their home and surrounded by people who they love. There's been a significant shift, I think, in terms of the focus of these hospices in terms of making sure that they can give that care within the community. So, I'm pleased that that's been recognised in this changed formula that has been undertaken.