5. Will the Cabinet Secretary provide an update on the provision of social care in Wales? OQ61359

Social care services are vital to the people of Wales. Annual data demonstrates that, at any one time, local government provides over 70,000 citizens with care and support. We continue to work across the health and social care system to ensure that people can achieve what matters to them and be supported to live well at home, or as close to home as possible.

Diolch. I want to stress the importance of social care, not just in facilitating speedy hospital discharge, but also in reducing the number of people needing to enter hospital and improving the life experiences of those who receive social care. Does the Cabinet Secretary agree that we need to promote equality with health in terms of status and esteem, that we need to recruit more people into the care sector, and that we need to learn from the reablement programme in Swansea and reduce the number of people leaving hospital needing to move into a care home?

Yes, can I thank Mike Hedges for that supplementary? I would absolutely agree with him in terms of the importance of social care, particularly in the two examples that you've just talked about—the delayed transfers of care. I'm working very closely with the Cabinet Secretary on how we work across health and social care to speed up that passage of patients through the system, and I think those two examples that you've highlighted, the building community resilience to prevent people going into hospital in the first place and the pathways to care, those two examples actually show why there is the need for that parity of esteem between health and social care.

I think it is fair to say that social care hasn't always enjoyed the same esteem as health, and that's been one of the challenges that has traditionally made it very difficult for us to be able to recruit into social care. But, because the delivery of health and social care is entirely dependent on our workforce, we did launch a health and social care workforce strategy, which gave us a 10-year plan of priorities. And we've recently just published a social care delivery plan, which is focusing specifically on the social care workforce and the recruitment, retention and resilience of that workforce. I think it's probably important to talk, as well, about the really good work that's going on in the social care fair work forum, with trade unions, with employers, Welsh Government, all continuing to work in social partnership on what steps we can take to improve terms and conditions for social care workers and make that a much more resilient workforce. We've now set up a sub-group of the forum to develop a draft pay and conditions progression framework, which is about having consistency across pay, terms and conditions of social care workers, not just in local authorities, where we do have that consistency, but out in the third sector and in private care provision as well. I think we're going to have to continue on that path, if we are to achieve the parity of esteem that you referred to, as far as the social care workforce is concerned.