Written question WQ86631

‘A Healthier Wales: Our Workforce Strategy for Health and Social Care’, which has been jointly developed by Social Care Wales and Health Education and Improvement Wales, launched in October 2020 and sets out a 10-year strategy for delivering an inclusive, engaged, sustainable, flexible and responsive health and social care workforce to delivery excellent services to the people of Wales.

In Wales we spend around 35% more on social care services than the UK Government does for England, however I am conscious that the sector needs continued support to address pay, recruitment and retention issues, exacerbated by the extreme challenges presented during the Covid pandemic and now the cost-of-living crisis. That is why in April this year, I made available £43m of funding to Local Authorities Health Boards for 2022-23 to deliver our Programme for Government commitment to introduce the Real Living Wage to social care workers in Wales. This provided a vital wage uplift to a group of key workers.

The Social Care Fair Work Forum, which includes representation from social care providers, commissioners, trade unions and Government continues to work in partnership to explore areas for improving the terms and conditions for social care staff to make joint recommendations to Ministers.

To mark our commitment to making these improvements, we made payments of £1498 to around 65,000 social care workers in the summer. We want social care workers to have long and rewarding careers in the sector.

The work of the Forum includes the development of a pay and progression framework which will provide more consistent and transparent progression opportunities for those working in the sector, and ongoing work to provide safe, healthy and inclusive workforce environments. We do however recognise that this is not an exhaustive list and there is more that can and will be done to ensure that care providers in Wales are able to provide our workforce with attractive terms and conditions which will help retain and attract staff to the sector.

The Forum is also seeking to define what fair work looks like in terms of sick pay. Further research work will be needed through a Task & Finish group to develop the principles of an occupational sick pay framework for the sector. The Forum is in the process of writing to the Deputy Minister for Social Services and I to provide advice and recommendations for our consideration around sick pay for social care workers in the short, medium and long term, which I look forward to receiving.

Last week the Deputy Minister for Social Services, together with the Plaid Cymru Designated Member Cefin Campbell, published a report which sets out independent advice about the next stage of national development for the sector, placing us well in responding not only to short term challenges, but also building for the long term.

We made an additional £10m available in April for local authorities to realise their ambition to support the domiciliary care sector by funding driving lessons and allowing them to purchase electric vehicles for use by staff. We know some local authorities have also used this funding to support increased milage rates in the independent domiciliary care sector due to the increases in fuel costs.

Social Care Wales recently published a workforce plan for the social work profession which addresses issues such as attraction and recruitment, education and learning, leadership and wellbeing. This plan also reflects some of the work already taking place, such as the importance of looking at social work workforce terms and conditions.

We are working with Social Care Wales, local authorities and other employers of social workers on the steps to help improve retention.

In the current climate, as we face cuts to public expenditure, working in social partnership will be more important than ever. We will continue to work together pragmatically and creatively to provide the best that we can for the people of Wales and our social care workforce.