05/02/2014 The Wales Report

Tonight on the Wales Report: Monitoring standards in the NHS but

is the Welsh system up to the task? Bridging the skills gap among Welsh

workers, but does the new strategy go far enough?

And National Poet, Gillian Clarke, on why a love of literature is the

key to improving literacy standards in Wales. Stay with us for the Wales

Report. Good evening and welcome to the Wales Report where we take a

look at the issues affecting lives in Wales and question some of those

making the decisions. A series of scandals in the NHS has raised

serious concerns about patient safety in hospitals. In Wales there

are concerns that the organisation monitoring standards, Health Care

Inspectorate Wales, is not up to the job. The Wales Report has been told

that in the next few weeks the National Assembly's Health and

Social Care Committee is going to call for reform of the Inspectorate

following criticism from people inside and external stakeholders.

The underlying concern is that patients' safety is being put at

risk as Helen Callaghan reports. Weak management and poor

communication. Just two of the failings that led to an increase in

cases of the C.difficile log. The man running Wales 's biggest

hospital has offered an unreserved apology to the families of people

who died while waiting heart surgery. Scandals have shaken our

faith in the professionals who look of reds. When things go wrong we

want to know who has been watching over them. Here, Health Care

Inspectorate Wales is the chief regulator. Part of the Welsh

Government, it is meant to act independently to ensure all services

and to standard. It has had the responsibility since 2004. It is the

organisation 's 10th birthday this year. You won't find too many people

here that the offices ready to celebrate. Just recently they have

been on the receiving end of a series of devious and inane

criticisms. Ash Celia and stinging criticisms.

There has also been criticism on how the Inspectorate works with other

watchdogs. That includes Wales 's community health councils. They

regularly inspect services and collect data about patient

experiences which they can share with HCIW. They are worried about

the Inspectorate ability to use it. There is a lack of the source and an

intelligence Blackall where we can provide the data and we need to

ensure we do that in a reliable way that in a form the Inspectorate can

use. When it gets to HIW, we don't have the perception it is being used

effectively. There are concerns if their information is not being acted

upon, problems could be missed. One would assume that if you are not

utilising the intelligence we give you, a heads up the service is not

as effective as it should be, people would suffer as a result. Another

persistent complaint about Health Care Inspectorate Wales is following

its own investigations is taking too long to publish reports and action

plans. Looking at the websites, we found that after an inspection on a

spot check, on average there was at least a five-month wait before any

report came out. In some cases it was a year before anything was

published. Mental health charity, Hafal said it is vital the reporter

then as soon as possible. It takes a long time for the reporter come out.

There is a chance problems will continue to occur in the particular

agency where the problem occurred or elsewhere because they haven't

learned their lesson. It is important we learn quickly what

happens. Recent scandals demonstrate in adequate scrutiny of health

services can jeopardise patient safety. When it emerged hundreds of

patients died needlessly at a hospital in midst of a chip,

England's health regulator was heavily criticised for failing to

uncover what is going on. Hospital in Staffordshire. In Wales when

questioned by the assemblies Health Committee during an enquiry into the

Inspectorate 's work, HIW Chief Executive admitted a similar -- if a

similar situation arose year, it could go and detected. My concern at

the moment in terms of being able to give you the assurance you want, is

I am not convinced that we have sufficient coverage in terms of

testing for me to be able to give you that assurance. Doctor

Chamberlain said given more resources she would like all major

hospitals in Wales to receive at least two unannounced inspections

every year. She confessed currently inspections and only being carried

out once every three years. I think it is about one in three. We quite

away. -- we're quite away. The Inspectorate did issue a statement

saying it recognises that external scrutiny and challenge is critical.

It is expected that further scrutiny is likely to come in the next few

weeks when the Health Committee publishes its findings following its

enquiry into the Inspectorate. The Wales reporter understands it might

make uncomfortable reading for the inspect threats. We have been told

the committee is likely to recommend the Welsh Government carries out a

root and branch review of high be inspected at operates. Many argue

that radical change is exactly what is needed if patients are to get the

regulator they deserve. The lesson of bad things that have happened,

both in England and in Wales, is that we need a robust and reliable

and trusted regulator. Helen Callaghan reporting. Joining

me now from our Westminster studio is the MP for Cynon Valley, Labour's

Ann Clwyd. She has been campaigning to improve standards in hospitals in

Wales and England. She produced a comprehensive report last year on

the way ahead. Thank you very much for joining us. How you concerned

are you? I don't think it is fit for purpose. The Health Care

Inspectorate Wales which is supposed to be the regulator says itself it

can't manage, it can't assure people that is not a mid Staffordshire

situation in some Welsh hospitals, the fact they have and be sourced --

and the resort and all the organisations that have given

evidence have lots of criticisms. They are calling for the Chief

Executive of hospitals in Wales. I have been concerned about several

issues in the NHS in Wales because of the hundreds of letters I

received from people in Wales. What to say to be worse, especially

workers in the NHS, who would save -- say you are them and bring --

scaremongering? I am simply quoting from the health spectre that Wales

which for some time has not been able to act effectively as a

regulator. That is a concern. What happened in mid Staffordshire is the

people who were supposed to regulate weren't able to do their job, did

not do their job. That is why you have a new commission in England

because the body that was in being beforehand simply did not do the job

and stop I am afraid that is the same situation in Wales. If the

Inspectorate Chief Executive herself said she can't promise that isn't a

similar situation in Wales, that is a cause for concern. I have had

whistle-blowers get in touch with me. I would like more to get in

touch with me. I would protect their identities. I had the consultant

sending me an e-mail saying he wanted to tell me he no longer

wanted to work in the NHS in Wales because he could not give his

patients the care they needed. Did he offer any views why he wasn't

able to provide the standard of care? Was it a question of

resources? Is it how the health service is managed? He was not able

to give people, patients were being referred all being referred to

late. He wasn't able to carry out the diagnosis that he wished to

carry out. He could not give people the scans he thought they should

have. I have had several others say similar things. You have only got to

look at what is going on, I think there is a cover as far as some of

the figures are concerned. I made these points to the First Minister,

I made them to the Minister for health in Wales. I have been

pressing on all these things for a long time. In that sense, the

arguments people have for merging these two Inspectorate in Wales, the

health care is that and then the care inspected the is, what should

happen? I am not a person who can say what reorganisation should be

taking place. I am saying there should be a keyhole style inspection

in Wales of the hospitals with the highest mortality rates. Once you do

that, you can put some hospitals, if the need to be put, into special

measures. That is imperative. A proper health inspected it which is

better resourced, not run on the same lines? A proper health

inspected it. Look at the Care Quality Commission in England. That

has been criticising itself. We should have a chief inspector of

hospitals as the do in England. In fact, Professor Sir Mike Richards is

making sure the report that I wrote a few months ago on complaints and

the way to deal with complaints, is actually being put into practice. I

will be checking up on that in six months time. Just a final point, you

mentioned you have been in touch with the First Minister, have the

responses from the Welsh Government team satisfactory? To be frank, no.

I am still waiting for a reply. I have had a holding reply. I visited

Carwyn Jones, the First Minister, at the end of November. I wrote to him

on December the 3rd, I have had a holding reply and two months have

gone by. I don't consider that satisfactory. We hope to get answers

in the next few weeks. Thank you very much for joining us.

Is there a skills shortage in the Welsh workforce? 11.4% of the

working age population in Wales have no qualifications, that's a higher

proportion than the UK average. Wales also ranks poorly in education

indicators such as the international league tables PISA and the warnings

are clear, that an under-skilled workforce is damaging the Welsh

economy. Speaking on this programme last month the economist and Welsh

Government adviser, Gerald Holtham, had this message.

Our educational standards are slipping behind those of the rest of

the UK and certainly behind the best places in Europe. We have got to

turn that around. EV want technical businesses here, large companies

here, what they want is a trained workforce. Youth unemployment in

Wales is also high there are currently 3,545 young people aged

between 16 and 24 claiming unemployment benefits for a year or

more. Some in the business community say that while they are happy to

provide training, schools in Wales should do more to prepare young

people for the world of work. The private sector should be involved. I

think it is the responsibility of the education sector to provide a

workforce that is numerous and literate and has the basic skills

the private sector needs. Last week the Welsh Government launched a ten

year strategy to boost skills in the workplace. I'm joined now by the

Deputy Minister for Skills, Labour's Ken Skates. This figure of over 11%

of the working age population in Wales without qualifications, when

is that likely to come down to the English average? We are driving down

those figures by getting people who need the skills, to give them the

skills and we have the essential skills in the workplace programme

and earlier today I was with a home care service giving them the pledge

because that employer has done the right thing and recognise many

employees need essential skills and literacy, numerous and ICT. Skills

they did not pick up at school. Yes, ICT skills are constantly

changing because we need to up skilled people in that domain to

make sure the gap in the market can be addressed and plugged.

Basic numerous ER literacy are things which employers should not be

having to teach. You could ask that question of any government anywhere

in the world. What we are doing and precious few are doing is taking

action, we are implementing the long-term plan to lift up the

essential skills. You have no choice because standards are so low.

Employers need to engage with government.

With European money we are funnelling -- funding essential

skills across Wales. When can people see results, based the international

league tables and the school results and Baron Barris in some cases.

When will we see measurable results? We are already seeing results,

skills training is increasing between us and England. We are

seeing a vast improvement in terms of employability of young people.

We measure that by the amount of young people not in education,

employment or training. Wales has developed -- delivered the

sharpest fall in the proportion of young people... We recognise it has

been stubborn and too high and we have set a target of 9% to be

sustained by 2017 for that group of 16 to 18-year-olds.

We are pushing that figure down dramatically.

Why are we in a position in 2014 where Wales which has had such a

wonderful track record in vocational training where we are taking

emergency measures to catch up, what's gone wrong?

They are sustainable measures. The policies we are implementing in

tandem with employers and learning providers will last the test of

time. Traditionally the Welsh economy has been based around heavy

industry, that industry was decimated in the 1980s and

communities were based around strong ethics of community learning, based

around the workplace. That was troubled by the experience of the

1980s. We are having to put together many communities to reinvigorate the

sense of learning. Let's spell out the consequences of

not getting to where you want to get to. One of the warnings we reported

on was people want to invest in Wales, they will look at the quality

of education and the basic skills, if we don't get to a better place,

the consequences are dire. You have justified why we have

implemented this strategy. We have worked hand-in-hand with

employers, further education and universities and the trade unions,

and the CBI, to make sure we take collective responsibility to drive

up skills in society so we can capture a higher proportion of those

jobs because we need to recall that over the past decade we have seen a

deep crease in the number of lower skilled jobs in the Western world.

This is part of the trend in the Western world. We need to make sure

we lift the average level of skills up so we capture higher-level

skilled jobs. I mentioned the International table

results which has caused banks to. Will that improved by 2016 and how

important is it that Wales moves up the table in terms of literacy and

numerous sea and science? The Minister for education and First

Minister say it is vital we raise standards.

My concern is that we improve employability skills, these are

often attitudes, making sure people have the right attitude to the

workplace, their work ready and they have the basic skills. It is no good

at educating the population, you need to make sure the population are

able to apply what they learn to the world of work so we are looking at

schemes like the using gauge meant framework to give young people a

guarantee of a suitable place post-16. It doesn't just recognise

their skills Peter Lines their skills and hopes and missions with

where they want to be -- but lines. In two, three, four years time?

Are we going to see measurable improvements because we can talk

about aspirations endlessly. Give us a sense of what the goals are, how

can we measure success? 2017, we will reduce the proportion of young

people who are not in education, employment or training to 9% and

keep it at that level or lower. Minister, thank you for coming in.

The events organised to celebrate the centenary of Dylan Thomas' birth

are well underway. Wales' National Poet Gillian Clarke believes that

encouraging people to read more books and poetry by native authors

is the key to tackling poor literacy levels. We caught up with her at a

poets' retreat organized by Literature Wales on the theme of

another great Thomas -- RS Thomas. The cat and see. It is a matter of a

black cat on their clifftop in March. His eyes anticipate the

petals. The formal equation of a domestic per with the cold interiors

of the Seas mirror. I became a poet partly because I bet

a beautiful poem called the cat and the sea and after doing Shelley,

Wordsworth, Tennyson, Shakespeare, this man called Thomas had this

beautiful poem. I was knocked out. I read it again and again. How has he

done that, how has he done it? I can remember owing to schools years ago

grumbling that there were no Welsh poets studied in Wales and teachers

said there aren't any good enough. Can you believe it? I would like to

see everybody reading something, some of the people here are for a

retreat. One man said I knew nothing about poetry and I have never

written and he has been so engaged in it. I would like to solve the

literacy problem in Wales, we used to be the best in Britain. What has

happened? There is no time for the most important thing in education

and that is creativity. No success has ever been had in chemistry. In

mathematics. In any thing unless creativity and imagination have been

at the core. It couldn't be more important. It is very exciting for a

child to discover characters from their life on the page. And scenes

from their life on the page. I would like to see all children doing some

writing every week in school. I would like them reading every day, I

want them to read whole books and not just chapters. We need to be the

best in Britain where we are lagging behind. I want all of the children

reading better than English children. If you were all excited

about what we read and write we would feel proud of ourselves and we

would be better at dealing with the other educational things. I want

people to feel affirmed. There is a challenge. Joining me now is

Leighton Andrews, the Labour AM for the Rhondda and a former Education

Minister and performance poet Claire Potter. Thank you for coming. There

was a question in the middle of that piece, we were the best in Wales,

what's gone wrong? I think we were not as focused as we should have

been on the standard in schools over the last decade. We took our eye off

the ball. It has been excepted by others and in terms of creativity we

introduced the foundation phase enabling young people to learn

through doing, it enables them to act creatively -- creatively and has

been welcomed by not just those in education but those beyond in terms

of what it allows young people to do. What is your experience, what I

can people saying? They left poetry and experience and I find we begin

with a poem but we connect it to their own lives and characters

meaningful to them. What I'm hearing from teachers if that was

wonderful. If only I had the time do that. There are constraints of

targets and league tables and teachers are under pressure so they

don't have the space to think creatively and do what they are

passionate about. How does that process of engaging

with a vehicle like poetry will translate directly into better

literacy standards as measured by international organisations which

have been causing us problems? If you go into a school with a poem,

you don't just teach the poem, you ask the children how it connects and

relates and then they write so when we look at grammar and punctuation,

it is not in isolation or something far removed. They come to understand

in their work which is important to them if they use a comma or a; they

are understanding the meaning because it connects to them. And

Tuohy focus too much on tight measures on rigorous measures -- do

we focus too much and should we let the season -- system to be more

flexible? We don't have league tables for primary schools. Let's be

clear, what Claire is doing is fantastic and it is going on across

Wales. Children's authors, children writing reviews of films. I brought

a film club in to boost literacy and numerous sea. There is a huge amount

of creativity going on. Gwyn Thomas pot-macro Centenary was last year

and Rachel is judging one for schools. --'s. The question then is

when can we see that commendable activity translating into better

performance and a less in harassing showing for Wales in the league

tables? You don't want a simplistic crude alignment of creative it --

creative activities. It does broaden people's understanding and I asked

Di Smith to carry out a full review of the arts and education engaged

and I produced age in this report well written report last summer

which Hugh Lewis is looking at about how we bring that in.

Finally, engaging and people, are we promoting the right kinds of poets

and authors, there was a big Dylan Thomas industry, it is a big

momentum, we saw RS Thomas, very little mention of him, Gwyn Thomas

concentrating on the right authors and poets? I would say no. When I

taught at a school in Cardiff I was surprised and was still using the

same texts I was taught at school if you years ago. We need to rethink

that and more Welsh authors to make it more relevant and more real in

our language so it is more accessible. Examples. Nigel Jenkins,

RS Thomas, Gillian Clark. RB in the right place? The opportunity is

there, we invested as a Welsh government taking the novels of

Wales into Welsh secondary schools. It is in the curriculum. The issue

is are the teachers sufficiently equipped with a knowledge of Welsh

literature in various forms from drama to poetry to teach that in the

curriculum, it is a question we should look at but the opportunity

is there. That is a different debate for another time. Thank you for

coming in. That's it for this week's programme.

We'll be taking a break next week, but in the meantime you can get in

touch with us about the issues discussed tonight, or indeed

anything else. E-mail us at [email protected] and we are

on Twitter. Thanks for watching. Good night. Nos da.