Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:14 pm on 19 October 2022.
Diolch. I have to be brief, as time is short, but thanks very much to all contributors.
Mike Hedges, as you said, this investigation was timely. Although it primarily involves older people, it is not exclusively about older people; everything should be equitable, and we need to move from doing things to or for people to doing things with them.
Natasha emphasised the need for financial stability where the funding landscape is complex and confusing and staff are being lost to the retail and hospitality sectors.
Peredur Griffiths talked about the need to simplify the process for care home commissioning, and about the lack of community hospital capacity. That takes me back to the campaign initially won and then lost, in the third Senedd term, Community Hospitals Acting Nationally Together Cymru, CHANT Cymru. We held the line briefly but then they closed them. But that's not the Chair speaking—momentarily, I became an independent Member. Right. [Laughter.]
Gareth Davies referred to the importance of the role of nurses, and also the importance of staff recruitment and retention.
I thank the Deputy Minister for her response. She referred to the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014, and talked about evaluation studies being undertaken, and service users and carers helping the Welsh Government to shape this via task and finish groups. We do need to know how those groups comply with co-productive principles, which is about making time to save time, and turning the power thing upside down. How is that building community resilience and capacity, so that people can be genuine equal partners and co-creators?
As the written response that we have from the Welsh Government stated, once the expert group report is considered by Ministers and the designated Member, there will be an extensive period of consultation, including service users and their families, as part of the process to develop an implementation plan. That is the absolute antithesis of the social services and well-being Act, and its codes of practice. Where are the genuine prudential care principles—co-production, early intervention and prevention principles—running to that?
And in terms of both accepted and rejected recommendations, I'm pleased to hear some of the Deputy Minister's response, but I still feel that perhaps there's a deficit, which is reflecting itself in public services elsewhere in Wales, in terms of really understanding what the voice of lived experience, the cost savings that can be generated through that and information sharing actually mean. And if we embrace that properly, how we can genuinely improve lives, build stronger communities and, ultimately, not add costs but save costs, too. Thank you.