Social care is an incredibly important part of our healthcare system, however, much like the rest of our healthcare system, it’s becoming stretched beyond breaking point.
I cannot stress how important our social care services are in providing support for those in need as well as the NHS as a whole.
A stronger social care service will keep more people well for longer and therefore reduce the number of people in hospital. This would also allow patients to be discharged in a quicker and safer manner freeing up more bedspace for those who need treatment.
Sadly, the failure of our social care by the Welsh Government has led to bottlenecks in NHS hospitals wards with healthy patients not being able to be discharged with home care because of a lack of social care provision.
Currently in Wales, unpaid careers are having to prop up a struggling social care system, with those who are paid being grossly underpaid and undervalued which in turn leads to a high staff turnover rate.
This then results in severe gaps in provision which in turn puts higher stresses on unpaid carers.
When it comes to funding our social care services, many local authorities are simply struggling to cope with the increasing financial demands while dealing with real terms cuts from the Welsh Government.
Quite frankly, we cannot continue on as we are in this state for much longer.
Sadly, too many times, the Welsh Government has increased funding for our NHS without proportionate consideration to funding our social care sector.
This is incredibly short-term thinking and will do little to alleviate the mounting pressures.
Our social care sector is currently facing pressures of £260 million, but Welsh Government only providing an increase of less than 10% of that earlier this year.
I believe we need to establish a new Health and Social Care Inspectorate to ensure that the future of social care is assessed, and the sectors needs are taken into account when planning long term-spending.
I firmly believe that we need to ensure that our social care sector is taken into consideration as an integral part of our healthcare system here in Wales, because treating them as separate matters is only harming the people of Wales.
Only by addressing the real issues that the sector has can we care for the most vulnerable people in society and alleviate many problems in our NHS.