, Health and Social Care Committee
Health and Social Care (Wales) Bill: evidence session with the Minister for Social Care
Yes, of course.
, Health and Social Care Committee
Health and Social Care (Wales) Bill: evidence session with the Minister for Social Care
Yes.
, Health and Social Care Committee
Health and Social Care (Wales) Bill: evidence session with the Minister for Social Care
Of course, yes. I absolutely agree with what you’re saying, Joyce, and safeguarding very much falls into my ministerial portfolio, so I’ve got a very keen interest in making sure that we get this right. So, the reporting process—. The difference around what…
, Health and Social Care Committee
Health and Social Care (Wales) Bill: evidence session with the Minister for Social Care
Yes. So, we haven't heard anything that is changing our policy direction at the moment, but that is not to say—you know, never say 'never'. That is not say that, if something is brought to our attention that requires us to look at that again, we wouldn't. But…
, Health and Social Care Committee
Health and Social Care (Wales) Bill: evidence session with the Minister for Social Care
That is absolutely the correct interpretation of what we're seeking to do. If you take a county the size of Powys, you could see somebody could be placed in Ystradgynlais, or could live in Ystradgynlais and be placed in Machynlleth or up in Welshpool or…
, Health and Social Care Committee
Health and Social Care (Wales) Bill: evidence session with the Minister for Social Care
I don't share the view that that is a real danger. Unregistered places are there. It's certainly a very dynamic picture, isn't it, with unregistered places, but we have seen the number of unregistered places reducing significantly over the last couple of…
, Health and Social Care Committee
Health and Social Care (Wales) Bill: evidence session with the Minister for Social Care
Thank you. Statutory advocacy is not contained within the Bill, although we are the only nation of the UK, of course, that does have statutory advocacy services for children in the care system. But it is about best practice, and it is about making sure that…
, Health and Social Care Committee
Health and Social Care (Wales) Bill: evidence session with the Minister for Social Care
I don't see it as a disincentive, Mabon. I think I see it as a process because different local authorities are in different places with their transition programme at the moment. In Joyce Watson's area, for instance, there's been significant progress in…
, Health and Social Care Committee
Health and Social Care (Wales) Bill: evidence session with the Minister for Social Care
It's a fair point, and it’s a reasonable concern. I’d go back to what I said earlier in response to a question from the Chair: we’re seeing more new providers, actually, registering in Wales. They’re not exiting the system. New providers are coming in over…
, Health and Social Care Committee
Health and Social Care (Wales) Bill: evidence session with the Minister for Social Care
Sorry, Mabon. Apologies.
, Health and Social Care Committee
Health and Social Care (Wales) Bill: evidence session with the Minister for Social Care
It is both ideological and a financial position. We are absolutely ideologically saying that we don't believe that looked-after children should be a source of profit for the private sector. I make no apologies for saying that is an ideological position. But…
, Health and Social Care Committee
Health and Social Care (Wales) Bill: evidence session with the Minister for Social Care
I'm pretty sure we have an understanding of that, Anthony, don't we?
, Health and Social Care Committee
Health and Social Care (Wales) Bill: evidence session with the Minister for Social Care
That is exactly what this Bill is set out to do, and that is exactly the ambition that we share with the WLGA, because that is what they want to see as well. In times of extremely difficult financial hardship for local authorities, they are looking at every…
, Health and Social Care Committee
Health and Social Care (Wales) Bill: evidence session with the Minister for Social Care
Because I think it still fails to address the fundamental issue that profit being made out of the sector should be reinvested in the sector. That still doesn’t allow that to happen. If you cap profits, it just means that you have slightly lower profits that…
, Health and Social Care Committee
Health and Social Care (Wales) Bill: evidence session with the Minister for Social Care
I don’t accept that. I think we need to be very clear about this. This is not going to produce savings overnight. Nobody is suggesting that this would produce savings overnight. This is also about ensuring that we have the right type of placements in the…
, Health and Social Care Committee
Health and Social Care (Wales) Bill: evidence session with the Minister for Social Care
The difference it’ll make, Chair, is that the profit that’s extracted will be reinvested in the services that we’re looking to provide to those children. Some of the providers in the sector in Wales are drawing between 20 per cent and 25 per cent in profits…
, Health and Social Care Committee
Health and Social Care (Wales) Bill: evidence session with the Minister for Social Care
Well, we had to set out in the Bill—. So, if we're moving towards achieving an objective, we had to set it out very clearly in the Bill. And one of the things that providers asked us to do was, rather than defining what 'not-for-profit' meant, they told us…
, Health and Social Care Committee
Health and Social Care (Wales) Bill: evidence session with the Minister for Social Care
No, and I think it is important that we do continue those discussions with them. We don't want these providers to leave the sector. Some of them are providing excellent care for children and we would want to retain that expertise and that excellence in the…
, Health and Social Care Committee
Health and Social Care (Wales) Bill: evidence session with the Minister for Social Care
I'll ask Anthony to respond to that.
, Health and Social Care Committee
Health and Social Care (Wales) Bill: evidence session with the Minister for Social Care
Depending on the size and the nature of the organisation, it will be simpler for some to do that than it will be for others. This is a particularly ambitious programme. We're very aware of that, but we are absolutely determined that this is the programme that…
, Health and Social Care Committee
Health and Social Care (Wales) Bill: evidence session with the Minister for Social Care
Well, what I would say is that we are very ambitious for this programme, Chair. We've set out in the legislation that new providers registering with Care Inspectorate Wales have to have not-for-profit status from 1 April 2026 and existing for-profit providers…
, Health and Social Care Committee
Health and Social Care (Wales) Bill: evidence session with the Minister for Social Care
Well, again, that is the way that the legislation has been constructed, to avoid those loopholes, because we have learned from the experiences of Scotland, where we saw for-profit providers trying to get around the provisions there, so we've made that very…
, Health and Social Care Committee
Health and Social Care (Wales) Bill: evidence session with the Minister for Social Care
So, again, I think we did touch on this last time, Anthony, didn't we, in terms of the discussions with the sector, and the way in which the current legislation is framed would not allow us to do this without moving towards new legislation. I don't know…
, Health and Social Care Committee
Health and Social Care (Wales) Bill: evidence session with the Minister for Social Care
Yes, I suppose it takes us back to the first evidence session, doesn't it, in terms of what we were seeking to achieve by introducing this legislation. So, the objective of the legislation, primarily, is to take profit out of the care of looked-after…
, Plenary
Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care
I thank Mark Isherwood for that question. I refer you back to the answer I gave to Llyr Gruffydd, which was relating to the overall process for the setting of care home fees. You've come—. Sorry, Llyr, I didn't address the point you raised about continuing…
