Social Care Bill for Wales looks to award success as well as identify failure

A new Regulation and Inspection of Social Care (Wales) Bill has been introduced before the National Assembly today, which makes several alterations to existing legislation in order to strengthen both the performance and accountability of the sector.

Key to the new regulatory regime is a clause which states that company owners and directors share the same legal responsibility to clients as frontline workers, while the Bill is also intended to make it easier for the regulator to act where providers are failing to implement improvements.

Additional changes include: a new emphasis on outcome-based approaches that focus on the well-being of the service user; the publishing of annual reports by all social care providers to allow easier comparison of their quality; while regulators will be empowered to offer clearer ratings of the services they inspect.

Learning the lessons

While NHS services in Wales have become the target of daily comparisons with those in England, as the Coalition parties look to argue those in England are performing better than they otherwise would under Labour, in contrast social care is said to be performing better in Wales. Health and Social Services Minister, Mark Drakeford, comments on why he feels their approach has proven a robust one.

He says, “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 says, “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.”

A further result of the Bill will see the Care Council for Wales reconstituted as Social Care Wales, meaning that workforce regulation, development and service improvement will be the responsibility of one sole body for the first time.

Care Forum Wales

Mario Kreft MBE, the chair of Care Forum Wales, has warmly welcomed the proposed legislation, saying that Wales needs a “change in DNA’ that will see all parties working in collaboration.

Mr Kreft comments: “Care Forum Wales would want to support the overall thrust of the legislation.

“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 does 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 continues, “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.”

He includes, “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.”