What assessment has the Minister made of the English Chief Medical Officer's annual report with regard to improving the care and health of older people in Wales?
I welcome the English Chief Medical Officer’s report and its focus on the many factors that influence how well people age and the rejection of the assumption that all people in older age will need a significant amount of care and support.
Our Age Friendly Wales: Our Strategy for an Ageing also rejects stereotypical images of older people as passive recipients of health and social care and aims to reframe older people as active contributors to the Welsh economy and cultural life. It is in everyone’s interests to create the environments that support people of all ages and abilities to live and age well.
To support age-friendly communities across Wales, we have funded local authorities - £50,000 each – to facilitate membership of the World Health Organisation’s Network of Age Friendly Cities and Communities. This allows Wales to be part of a global movement towards improving policies and services for older people. This relatively small amount of funding helps seed the development of a broad range of local initiatives to help older people, including those with disabilities, to access the community support vital to spending more years in good health.
Through the introduction of quality statements for major conditions, such as cancer, diabetes and heart disease, we are encouraging a system-wide focus on secondary prevention. We have also recently published Living with Persistent Pain.
The Older People’s Commissioner champions the work to create an age friendly Wales. In response to the English CMO’s report, Paul Farmer, chief executive at Age UK, called for a “cross-government ageing strategy, and a minister for older people to help drive forward change”. These are already in place here and Wales has been noted as an example of international good practice in its approach to creating age-friendly communities.