In August 2021, I approved a new five-year regional integration fund to support the continued development of integrated health and social care services in Wales. Today, I am pleased to be able to provide more detail on the fund and to officially launch the guidance that my officials have co-produced with regional partnership boards in order to prepare for the launch of the new fund on 1 April.

'A Healthier Wales' is our long-term plan for health and social care in Wales. It sets out a future vision of a whole-system approach to health and social care, which is focused on health and well-being, and, critically, on preventing illness. It recognises the regional partnership boards as key drivers of integration, empowering them to pool resources and expertise to deliver seamless, preventive models of care at a local, regional and national level.

During the COVID-19 pandemic and with support from the integrated care fund and transformation fund, regional partnership boards have developed new models of care that have proved invaluable, including rapid discharge from hospital to home and admission avoidance models. We know there's a problem already in terms of delayed transfer of care. Had we not had these models in place, the situation would have been a lot worse. Now, more than ever, joined up, integrated planning and delivery of services is crucial to help us as we continue with our COVID-19 response, that we build for recovery and we transform our health and care system.

I want to see Wales build on the good practice and partnership working that has developed across health, social care and the third sector over the past two years, and embed effective and preventative community solutions. The new regional integration fund will support this activity by further embedding existing national models of care, and by developing new ones for the identified priority population groups. The new fund will run from April 2022 to March 2027, and will develop national integrated models of care around six key thematic priorities. These are: community-based care, prevention and community co-ordination; secondly, place-based care, complex care closer to home; thirdly, promoting good emotional health and well-being; fourthly, supporting families to stay together safely and through providing therapeutic support for care-experienced children; fifthly, home from hospital; and sixthly, accommodation-based solutions.

I've listened to feedback from regional partners and to the findings from the independent evaluations into previous funds, which stated that short-term funding made transformation and integration difficult to achieve. In response, I have committed to an annual investment of £144 million for five years.