10. Short Debate: The current challenges facing the health and social care system in Wales, and opportunities for future service transformation

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 6:42 pm on 11 January 2023.

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Photo of Laura Anne Jones Laura Anne Jones Conservative 6:42, 11 January 2023

I, too, would like to thank my colleague, Peter Fox, for giving me a minute of his time and for bringing this important topic to the floor of the Senedd. It's not being overly dramatic when we say that we face a crisis in social care. The Aneurin Bevan health board in my region have said that, this month, they'd had around 400 patients who could have been discharged but were unable to be. Even a report by the Welsh NHS Confederation had most of the NHS leaders saying that the care system had a massive knock-on effect across the healthcare system, with the added pressures driving the increase in urgent care demand. They also agreed that the lack of social care capacity is having an impact on the ability to tackle the effective care backlog—something that, as we know, has been drastically increased due to the COVID lockdowns. It's clear to me that there needs to be far better integration between health and social care, as has been said, with more financial investment going into social care, and there needs to be enhanced partnership working, as you alluded to as well. 

It's also imperative that we ensure that social care is an attractive career—far more than is currently the case—and that there are enhanced career progression opportunities to improve recruitment and retention, otherwise this will be, sadly, a never-ending cycle. I could go on, if time was allowed, but as we've heard from the contributions so far and from the Member for Monmouth, there have been some really good ideas put forward and I hope that the Minister will listen to them. So, thank you very much.