Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd at 2:38 pm on 16 February 2022.
Gareth Davies highlights a crucial point. There is no way that the health service will flourish unless the social care system is operating to its maximum. The reason why over 1,000 people who are medically fit to be discharged are not able to be discharged is, to a large extent, because there is not the domiciliary support in their own homes for them to manage at home, and there aren't enough spaces in care homes, where there aren't enough staff to look after them. Because of that, they're totally interlinked, and that's why we are working so closely together, the Minister for Health and Social Services and myself as the Deputy Minister for social care—because these two elements are totally linked, and what happens in the social care service impacts in the hospitals.
We've been meeting every week in an action committee, with the local health boards and with the local authorities, and we've come up with a huge range of proposals in order to get people home more quickly, to try to ensure that they receive the support in some way or another when they do go home. We've also made, as you know from the announcement I made yesterday, big efforts in order to increase the social care workforce. So, we are working very hard to ensure that there is an improvement, and he makes an important point on how linked these two areas of service are.