New Wales Social Care Bill will make care homes more accountable

Legislation for the new Social Care Bill for Wales has been unveiled at Cardiff’s Hallmark Penylan House.

Welsh Assembly ministers are optimistic that the Bill, which is designed to make care providers as accountable as frontline workers, will empower care regulators to bring about real improvement in the sector, as well as achieving more transparent services.

Health and Social Services Minister, Mark Drakeford, chose the Linc-Cymru Housing Association home for the launch, saying: “I was delighted to meet the residents and staff at Penylan House Care Home.

“I know that this home is one that is successful and is valued by those living there. I want other homes and services to learn from this success story, and others, so that everyone in Wales enjoys the kind of life in later years that they deserve. The Bill I’ve unveiled today will help to ensure that happens.”

Welcoming the Regulation and Inspection of Social Care (Wales) Bill, Anne Thomas, the executive director of Linc Care, said:

“We have been involved in the development of this Bill through the Care Forum Wales, and its introduction marks a positive step for the care sector in Wales. While there are clearly challenges within the sector, this new Bill aims to encourage care homes to provide the very best level of care, promote good practice and praise success.

“One of the biggest challenges for care providers will be the reforms to the inspection process that will be introduced. I am pleased that there will be a move away from settling for minimum standards which are set for a care home towards focusing on the needs of the people who use the services.

“Local authorities and health boards need to ensure that their contacts with care providers reflect the same standards that CSSIW are looking for. Partnership working is essential to the delivery of good person-centred care.”

The new Bill sets out measures to achieve outcome-based solutions and to empower regulators to act where services are under performing, while providers will also be required to publish annual reports.

Having made a success story of Penylan House, Ms Thomas believes that providers need to focus on sourcing the best workforce and applying robust training programmes.

She added: “We provide high quality care in a safe, relaxed and homely environment that is sensitive to an individual’s needs, and a big factor in enabling us to do this is the quality of our staff. We have designed our own innovative way of recruiting to ensure we employ the best possible staff and run a comprehensive induction programme to make sure all new recruits receive specialist training, for example, in looking after people with dementia. We also have a programme of regular training sessions to ensure staff are aware of the latest care practice.”

The Legislation

On the legislation itself, Mr Drakeford said: “The delivery of social care has changed significantly over the last 15 years with far greater numbers of people being cared for in the community. People living in residential care also have more complex health and care needs than they did 15 years ago.

“The foundation of our social services has been transformed through our Social Services and Well-being Act, and the system of regulation now needs to change to reflect this.”

On poor care sector performance he said:“We have learned lessons from Southern Cross, Mid Staffs, Winterbourne Operation Jasmine and other scandals where people being cared for were badly let down by services. We need to ensure our regulation regime reflects modern practice and the ever-changing world of social care.

“High-quality care and support is about more than just meeting essential needs and minimum standards – it is about understanding the impact which these services have on people’s lives and on their well-being.

“This new Bill is the next step in ensuring social services in Wales are sustainable and fit for the future. It will, if passed, create a regulation system geared to support success, not simply to identify failure. But where failure is identified, it will speed up the regulatory response. Our approach will be to regulate for improvement and success.

“Regulation of the social care sector already delivers real benefits for the people who rely on the services they provide. Our new approach is a strong, robust policy to build on this success to ensure the safeguarding of all with a care and support need.”

Care Forum Wales

Mario Kreft, chair of Care Forum Wales, called the legislation "timely".

He said: “It is some time since the current regulations and legal system were put in place and, as the minister said, we’ve got many more people with complex needs receiving services at home.

“The people living in care homes have very complex needs, much more so than 20 years ago.

“It is therefore absolutely the right time on the back of the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014, which has created this new framework, that we now match that with a new regulatory framework, and there are certain aspects that we would certainly welcome.”

Although Mr Kreft did voice some concerns moving forwards, saying, “The reality is that in Wales today we have a struggling health and social care system.

“It’s struggling because of demand and because we are not harnessing the resources that we already have at our disposal.

“People in Wales are not working in partnership in the way that the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has shown in other parts of the UK. This makes a real difference in terms of efficiency of resources, quality of service delivery through what we call relationship centred care.”

He added: “Unfortunately, this new legislation will change little unless we really harness all the resources at our disposal and particularly recognise that social care is a fundamental cornerstone of the NHS in Wales.

“Independent social care in Wales is being decimated by flawed commissioning practices which put price before quality. As a result, morale in the sector among providers and the workforce is very low.

“It means we cannot attract enough of the right quality of people, because the economic model that most local authorities are using does not make it possible to make this a career to be proud of with all the things that you would expect for those skills.”

However he warned: “This new law will go some way, but if we don’t fundamentally change the way we do business, if we don’t fundamentally change the way we work collaboratively, if we don’t fundamentally value providers and their workforce and just hit them when it goes wrong, then quite frankly this will not make the progress and provide the framework that the minister wants it to do.”