Yes, thank you very much for that question. At any one time, we tend to fund between 5,000 and 6,000 people across Wales as continuing healthcare—that's the sort of total number. There will be a similar amount of people for funded nursing care, so we're funding about 12,000 people outside of the NHS at one time. Interestingly, we have now, as of the last StatsWales count, 10,400 NHS in-patient beds, so we are now funding more people and funding more care outside of the NHS than we provide in our beds, which is an interesting statistic, isn't it, that I think we don't focus on enough sometimes, because there are governance issues there as well.
In terms of assessment for individuals, that is always done best when it's done on a multi-agency basis. It's always done best when we get the timing right. If we assess somebody too soon after an acute episode, then, particularly frail older people need longer to recover from that, and that is what discharge to assess is all about. If we leave it too long, as Jenny’s mentioned earlier, then we get individuals who are deconditioned, are unable to return to their normal level and need more support. So, that assessment is about getting the context and getting the intelligence and getting the expertise there, as well as getting the timing right. There can be delays, when people are on holidays; getting everyone together, collating assessments can take some time, but the national framework, the policy framework, requires us to do that within a specific timeframe, so that is measurable.
And in terms of the services, that depends very much on what that individual needs. If the care needs are assessed as to be met within a care home environment, and that's what the individual wants, then it's about availability, and there are usually care home beds available, but they may not be the home of choice for an individual, so we have to manage that process very sensitively, because it's where somebody’s going to live for the rest of their lives, isn't it?
If it's about a package of care in the community, then that can depend on the availability of domiciliary care agencies and what they've got in terms of workers. We find that increasingly difficult. There are more delays and more waits for dom care. It's a very difficult area, isn't it? It's not paid hugely. We are competing with retail and with hospitality for the same pool of individuals who may be interested in this work, and it’s something that we all have to grapple with, around how we actually make care services much more attractive as a career. But that does impact. So, the location of care and what the actual package of care is will depend on how quickly we can put a service in place.