5. What support is the Welsh Government providing to Wales's social care workforce? OQ58637

Well, Llywydd, I thank Hefin David for the question. We are working closely with our social care partners to improve the employment terms and conditions of the workforce. Forty-three million pounds has been provided to the sector to help it increase wages to the real living wage. In addition to that, £45 million has been distributed as a workforce grant to local authorities this year.

Thank you for that answer.

This question follows on, in many ways, from my question last week about the ambulance service. This is the other end of the scale, where delays further down the way with the ambulance service might be caused by delayed transfers of care, which of course rely hugely on the social care workforce. I took a call this week and last week as well from Neville Southall, who is working for Unison, trying to get care homes to recognise the value of their workforce, and working with care homes and Unison to do that, and he said there are a few things that could happen to help things improve. First of all, pay, and the First Minister has recognised that the real living wage is vital; there is also recruitment, as those people who are working in the care sector are finding that they are overburdened with work; there is working conditions, which lack parity with the NHS; there is trade union recognition, which is vitally important; and overall that amounts to parity of esteem with their fellow NHS workers. And what Neville Southall told me was that he was finding that people in the care sector were feeling less recognised than their NHS counterparts during the pandemic. So, all of these things together are important. Would the First Minister be willing to allow officials to meet with me and with Neville Southall, and the Minister, to discuss some of these issues and try to find a way through that would be helpful to him in his work?

Well, Llywydd, Hefin David made a series of important points there, all of which I think the Welsh Government would agree with and all of which are areas in which we continue to make our efforts. I mentioned the £43 million we're investing in securing the real living wage for our social care workforce, the additional investment that we have made—£10 million in fact, on top of the £45 million we normally provide in the annual workforce grant, to help local authorities in their efforts to recruit and then to retain social care workers, and raising the status of the profession is really important in doing that. It's why this Senedd passed legislation to require the registration of the workforce. More than 40,000 workers in social care are already registered or are about to be registered here in Wales. We began with the registration of domiciliary care workers, we moved on to the registration of adult care homes as well, and that is important because it's through registration that you open the door to career progression, training, opportunities, leadership training. The social care fair work forum, which we've established as part of the social partnership forum, has just concluded the first iteration of a model that they are going to promote for progression by workers in social care. So, if you become a social care worker, you can see how a career could lie in front of you, as you would, indeed, if you joined the NHS. I'm very happy to look to see whether a conversation between the forum and Mr Southall would be a good way of taking forward some of the points he has made, relayed by the Member for Caerphilly this afternoon. 

My own local authority, Conwy County Borough Council, currently commissions around 790 beds supporting individuals in residential and/or nursing care. The gross spend within Conwy on residential and nursing services was £23 million in the last financial year, with only a potential uplift going forward of around 7 to 9 per cent—that's 7 to 9 per cent, not 79 per cent. Yet, in some other local authorities, where year on year they hold back in reserve, in some local authorities, a couple of hundred million in reserves, providers are indicating to the local authority that the combination of unpredicted high levels of inflation, increasing care levels, complex services and current workforce pressures are resulting in a financial shortfall relating to residential and nursing care—and I saw this first-hand when I visited a care home recently. First Minister, do you agree with me that the rates paid by any local authority to care homes should increase by at least inflation? And what steps are you taking to ensure that there's a fairer funding settlement and one that better reflects the true cost of social care need within our local authorities? Diolch.

Llywydd, we've rehearsed many times here the calls that come from different parts of Wales to reform the funding formula, and we have always said, as a Government, that when local authorities come forward with a proposal for reform, of course we will be prepared to discuss it with them. What we cannot possibly do, as the Member will understand, is negotiate a separate formula for each of the 22 local authorities. There is a single formula, as there is in England, as there is in Scotland. It's unavoidable that you have a single system. The system can be reformed, but it can only be reformed with the agreement of local authorities themselves. And, as to the point that she makes about guaranteeing an in-line-with-inflation rise in the funding of those services, I hope she is relaying that point to the new Government at Westminster, because if they will give us that uplift, we will definitely give it to the services that she has spoken about this afternoon.