Madam,

Carers in Gwynedd will now get the support they need following new government legislation.

The Welsh Government decision to include social care as one of five key priority areas for their new economic strategy is a “potential game-changer” for the sector and is a particularly timely boost when a number of care homes and home care companies are having to close or give up their contracts because they are not financially viable.

In Wales social care underpins and enables the NHS to function. It provides care for 150,000 people and employs 75,000 people which is over five per cent of the Welsh workforce.

Overwhelmingly, their wages are spent in the local communities where they live and work.

And their care provision enables others to work – knowing their loved ones are well looked after.

Between them care homes and nursing homes have some 23,000 beds - more than double the number provided by the NHS.

The First Minister’s announcement is a potential game-changer because the Welsh Government, to their credit, have been talking up social care as a sector of national strategic importance for some time.

Now the Welsh Government has gone an important step farther and identified social care as one of the five key pillars of the Welsh economy.

We need a thriving economy to pay for public services but services have to be maintained even in times of austerity and of course, the vast majority of social care is provided by the private sector and the Third Sector.

Yours etc,

Mario Kreft, Chairman, Care Forum Wales.

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