Dawn Bowden, Minister for Children and Social Care
As we move forward with the development of an Integrated Community Care System for Wales, I am pleased to share this latest position statement describing progress and achievements on some of the key investments made through our seven Regional Partnership Boards.
The Integrated Community Care System (ICCS) for Wales is underpinned by a preventative approach to securing good health and wellbeing for all our population. It will support the delivery of seamless health, social care, and third sector services in the community, to help people and communities maintain and manage their own health and wellbeing. The ICCS will also assist people to stay well at home and prevent the need for admission to hospital, or to return home quickly if they have needed time in a hospital.
Working in partnership and aligning resources across our system is fundamental to developing an ICCS for Wales. The strategic alignment and investment of the Housing with Care Fund (HCF), the Integration and Rebalancing Capital Fund (IRCF), and the Health and Social Care Regional Integration Fund (RIF), totalling over a quarter of a billion pounds annually, is enabling good progress towards realising our ambition.
The alignment of capital and revenue funding is crucial to ensuring we can invest in both services and estates to offer effective care and support in the community. With over 600,000 people supported through our Regional Integration Fund last year, and 70 capital schemes supported through the Housing with Care Fund, and an additional 25 schemes through Integrated Rebalancing Care Funding, we are creating synergy across health and social care and helping to support people with earlier interventions in their communities, reducing the demand on our statutory services.
Collectively, we recognise the fundamental role of the seven Regional Partnership Boards (RPBs) across Wales, and their delivery partners, who are playing a key role in leading the transformation required to realise our ambition of an ICCS for Wales. The RPBs are overseeing the investment of the funding described in the position statement and are playing a fundamental role in helping us identify what works for people and communities and sharing the learning. This, in turn, helps us to shape and design national models of care and blueprints for integrated health and social care hubs.
We recognise that system integration requires much more that the funds set out in the position statement. Other programmes of work, including the Urgent and Emergency Care Six Goals programme, the Strategic Primary Care Programme, and the Social Prescribing Framework, are also helping us to realise our ambition of establishing and delivering an ICCS for Wales. Collectively, these funds are helping us to develop and embed new ways of delivering care and support across our health and social care system, with the intention of shaping the way core health and social care resources are also utilised to support a preventative, seamless community care offer.
Moving forward, we will need to accelerate the transformation of our system by ensuring local and regional good practice is shared, scaled, and transferred across Wales. We must adapt and adopt good practice or justify reasons not to, to help us build a more consistent community care offer for our population.
This statement is being issued during recess to keep Members informed. Should Members wish me to make a further statement or to answer questions on this when the Senedd returns I would be happy to do so.