The Area Plan
Section 14A of the Act requires us to produce an Area Plan setting out how we will work together to address the findings and recommendations of our Population Assessment. The Plan needs to provide details of our approach to prevention, Information, Advice and Assistance, development of alternative delivery models and how we will deliver services through the medium of Welsh. We have to produce an Area Plan every five years.
The West Wales Area Plan has been produced jointly by the three Local Authorities and HDdUHB and other partners in the region. This collaborative approach will continue as we deliver against our shared objectives, ensuring that we achieve consistency where possible across the region and develop integrated and sustainable care and support to people in West Wales.
Our Plan is an important document that provides a clear framework for partners for integrating and transforming care and support and is a public statement of our intentions, to which users, carers and communities more generally are invited to hold us to account. We have intentionally made the Plan succinct so that it is accessible to the range of people and organisations that have an interest in how care and support is provided now and how we want to change it in the future.
National context
Whilst it focuses on the care and support needs of people in West Wales, our Plan is informed by a number of important national drivers. These are as follows:
The Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014, which provides a legislative framework for care and support based on the principles of:
- Supporting people to achieve their own well-being
- Putting people at the centre of their care and support and giving them a voice in terms of the support they receive
- Involving people in the design and delivery of services
- Developing services that help prevent, delay or reduce the need for care and support
- Promoting not for profit delivery models
- Collaboration across agencies in the provision of care and support and integration of key services including services for older people with complex needs, children with complex needs, people with a learning disability and carers, including young carers
The Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, which sets out five ways of working for public bodies:
- Long term – Balancing short-term needs with the need to safeguard the ability to also meet long-term needs
- Prevention – How acting to prevent problems occurring or getting worse may help public bodies meet their objectives
- Integration – Considering how public bodies’ well-being objectives may impact on each of the well-being goals, on their objectives, or on the objectives of other public bodies
- Collaboration – Acting in collaboration with any other person (or different parts of the body itself) that could help the body to meet its well-being objectives
- Involvement – The importance of involving people with an interest in achieving the well-being goals and ensuring that those people reflect the diversity of the area which the body serves.
The Parliamentary Review of Health and Social Care in Wales, which reported in January 2018 and calls for a seamless system of care for Wales, organised around the individual and their family and underpinned by the ‘Quadruple Aim’ of health and care staff, volunteers and citizens working together to deliver clear outcomes; improved health and well-being; a cared for workforce; and better value for money.
Prosperity for All, the Welsh Government’s national strategy, which sets out how the objectives for the current term of the National Assembly for Wales will be delivered and identifies longer-term foundations for the future. Five priority areas are identified, which include:
- Early years – recognising that an individual’s childhood experiences play a significant part in shaping their future and are crucial to their chances of going on to lead a healthy, prosperous and fulfilling life
- Social care – highlighting the centrality of compassionate, dignified care in maintaining strong communities and helping people to stay independent and healthy for longer, and emphasising the economic importance of the care sector
- Mental health – recognising that one in four people in Wales will experience mental ill health at some point in their lives and the importance of getting the right treatment at an early stage and raising awareness in order to prevent long term adverse impacts
The strategy also highlights the need for agencies to work more closely, on a consistent regional basis, to maintain resilience and responsiveness of services in the future.