To support health boards during this incredibly busy time, we've issued guidance in the form of a revised local options framework, which gives them flexibility and support to respond to the multiple risks being faced at the moment. We've also written to clinical leaders to encourage them not to admit people to hospital unless absolutely necessary, and to help medically fit patients to return home, or to an alternative place of safety, as soon as they are able to. This will create much needed capacity within our hospitals and the ambulance service, to ensure we can provide care to people with serious illness and injuries. 

'A Healthier Wales' sets out our vision for integrated, seamless services, with a focus on community-based treatment, which I know Peter Fox highlighted in his contribution. Our aim has always been for people to go into hospital only when treatment cannot be provided safety elsewhere, and to reduce the time people spend in hospital when they do have to go. And the vision is more relevant today than ever. We have continued to build on the foundations of 'A Healthier Wales', creating an environment in which our partners and workforce have actively embraced and delivered service transformation at pace. Our strategic programme for primary care, six goals for urgent and emergency care, and regional integration fund are all working towards this vision within the context of our current pressures. 

In December, the Minister for Health and Social Services launched the optimal hospital patient flow framework, and this sets a clear expectation for health boards and regional partnership boards to make sure people are only in hospital for as long as they need to be.

We have secured over 500 additional community beds for step-down care, and we will continue to work to try to increase this capacity. We're also investing in alternative options to attendance at emergency departments, including urgent primary care centres and same-day services. The ongoing programme of contract reform under way across primary care remains focused on transforming services and contracts to support better access for patients and the longer term sustainability of services. Action at local and national level is under way to accelerate cluster working, including across the primary and community care professions, as well as social care and other partners. This transformation, scaled up, and collaborative approach to service planning and delivery is at the heart of the primary care model for Wales and our aim for an integrated health and care service that promotes health and well-being.

Professional collaboratives of GPs, pharmacists, optometrists, dentists, allied health professionals and nurses are embedding throughout Wales to optimise multi-professional service delivery in the community. Strengthening the quality of roles and enabling professionals to work at the top of their licence is a focus for this area, and one we will see comes together as a part of workforce planning. 

Significant funds have been provided through regional partnership boards to support health and social care partners to work closer together and develop national models of integrated care that will offer preventative, seamless services for people in the community. Now, these resources include the five-year regional integration fund, providing £144 million a year to support transformation, and the newly established £50 million integration and rebalancing capital fund, which is directly supporting our ambition to establish 50 integrated health and care hubs across Wales. And three of the models being developed through the regional integration fund are specifically aimed at creating community capacity. We have introduced new home from hospital services, enabled complex care to be provided close to home, we've invested in social prescribing, and have made progress with telecare support services. Many of the things that Peter Fox mentioned in his introduction to the debate are things that we are doing and we want to do more of.

Clusters and regional partnership boards are driving this agenda on, but we know we need to go further and faster with these reforms. In 2023, we want to make progress to an integrated community care service that is available to everyone across Wales. This is not a new organisation, but rather an ambitious agenda to move and deeply integrate health and social care services and orientate them to building a stronger, local web of support. I think, in his contribution, Peter Fox described the sort of community support that can be built up on a local level, and that is something that we are aspiring to do.

The NHS planning framework for 2023-24 requires NHS organisations to develop a closer relationship with local government to tackle the issue of delayed transfers of care. In making financial allocations to local health boards, the Minister for Health and Social Services has been clear about the requirement for them to work much more closely with local authorities to provide an integrated community care response. It is absolutely essential that this integrated working takes place. And we do see real opportunities here. Twenty-six per cent of complex patients pending discharge are known to social care at the point of admission, so we want to develop a graduated model of support, including harnessing the third sector and voluntary effort—because we think there is a clear role for the third sector—to enable people to maintain a level of independence and quality of life and to strengthen local services to avoid people being admitted to hospital. So, we want to do all we possibly can to invest in the third sector and volunteers in order to keep people at home and to help them at home, and to also develop the hospital-at-home services, which, of course, we do have some examples of here in Wales.

We also want to increase reablement capacity in the community, because 70 per cent of people who receive reablement when they leave hospital require no further long-term care, or a much smaller package than without reablement. People report better quality-of-life outcomes after reablement and live independently for longer in their own homes.

And of course, we need every opportunity to use digital technology to support people and care workers, and this is something the Minister for Health and Social Services is driving forward very strongly. Strides have been made using telecare and, alongside seeking to provide greater reward and an attractive career for care workers, it is ever more critical in a very tight labour market that we maximise the use of technology in the community.

We will continue to work on these opportunities and we'll provide further updates, but we expect to have a strong web of support available locally before next winter and, over the medium term, we'll see the emergence of an integrated community care service in Wales. So, I'd like to end by thanking Peter Fox for introducing this debate in such a constructive way, and I do appreciate all the suggestions that he has made. And of course, we will look at them closely—many of them are things that are very close to our own hearts. So, diolch yn fawr iawn.