Corporate Strategy 2023-2028

Social Care

A2- We will ensure the appropriate provision of care and support, focusing on prevention and ensuring vulnerable people are safe.

Contribution to national well-being goals

We consider that our social care well-being objective will make a particular contribution to the following national well-being goals:

• A healthier Wales.
• A more equal Wales.
• A Wales of cohesive communities.

Rationale

• Pembrokeshire has an ageing population resulting in increasing demands for health and social care. 
• The COVID-19 pandemic placed significant strain on the health and social care system, the impact of will continue to be felt for the foreseeable future. In plain terms, the system is in crisis at a national and local level.
• The Council has a statutory responsibility to meet the care needs of its population and the cost incurred in doing so. In the current context, these increasing costs are placing a substantial strain on available resources which has an impact on all other council services.
• Social care provides support to many disabled people; we have a duty to meet these people’s rights and to take their views into account when delivering services.

What we are going to do

Work with the Health Board to ensure people receive a seamless and coordinated provision and ensure no-one who needs support is left in the gaps between services.

• Help deliver Operational Nightingale 23 to address the acute shared health/social care crisis.

Build a diverse and vibrant market, which includes micro and social enterprise development, rebalancing the market and a commissioning strategy in response to the market stability report.

• Grow our direct delivery presence and rebalance the market.  This will mean investing in growing and/or developing council run care homes.
• Create capacity to deliver care services to vulnerable people who need them, building in resilience to respond to market failure and challenges.
• Aim to have a minimum of 6 spaces for children in council-run homes within the period of this administration.

Reduce the numbers of children in care by preventing children coming into care and supporting children to leave care safely.

• Improved recruitment of foster carers to ensure children are placed closer to home, with local carers and a reduction in the use of more expensive and more distant external placements.

Develop a range of meaningful day opportunities and respite services for individual families and carers.

• Development of a day opportunities bureau.
• Broader offer of opportunities using community facilities and reducing use of current day opportunity buildings.
• Enhance our offer of bed based reablement for instance the Haverfordia project and Martello house.

Promote social care as a career of choice with the opportunity to make a difference to people’s lives, developing a career pathway.

• Introduce a minimum rate of pay for domiciliary care workers who provide care into people’s homes of £11.50 per hour effective from 2023, properly valuing the professional and difficult job carers do.

Shift the commissioning paradigm with continued development of a range of prevention / early intervention initiatives in order to reduce demand on statutory services.

• Continue to co-produce services with the third sector such as the Community Hub.

Put individuals and their needs at the centre of their care, giving them a voice and control.

• Continue to identify and implement effective approaches to digital inclusion and technology enabled care and support.
• Increase the uptake of direct payments.