3. Statement by the Minister for Health and Social Services: Launch of the new Health and Social Care Regional Integration Fund

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:26 pm on 1 February 2022.

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Photo of Jenny Rathbone Jenny Rathbone Labour 3:26, 1 February 2022

I definitely support your ambition for effective and preventative community solutions, and we doubtless need a great deal more prevention, as we've got 20 per cent of the population awaiting hospital appointments across Wales—that's a pretty devastating figure.

Anyway, two years ago, almost to the day, I visited the Cwm Taf neighbourhood nursing team just before the pandemic broke, and I witnessed the amazing specialist care delivered by and with the people who needed these services, which ranged from everything from people who needed wound care to people who needed palliative care to those who just needed support in understanding how to manage their condition, whatever it might be, in conjunction with their families and friends. Very much based on the Buurtzorg model of co-production, the pilot just demonstrated, in the evaluation, just how well this works, and I know that there is a commitment to spread that across the whole of Wales. So, how does this announcement today fit in with that ambition to ensure that every community has a self-managed neighbourhood nursing team, to ensure that people are kept out of hospital who don't need to be there?

Secondly, I'd just like to ask you about these community centres you're talking about. I was at the Co-operative Party's conference on Zoom the other day, and the First Minister was talking about 50 local community hubs, bringing health and social care together with other services, with citizens regarded as assets, to share their skills and combine in resolving the problems that that community faces. How does that—what the First Minister was talking about—link in with what you're talking about that's going to be led by these regional partnership boards?