The very personal purpose behind one Senedd member’s social care call

Watch the full report by Political Editor Adrian Masters

When one Senedd member stands to ask a question of the health minister today, it'll be more personal and poignant than many other such moments. 

Plaid Cymru's Rhys ab Owen is planning to raise the issue of social care in the chamber later and will call for the creation of a National Care Service.

But for him the political is also personal: his father, who was a member before him, now has dementia and is reliant on social care.

Owen John Thomas was a prominent Plaid Cymru member of what was then the National Assembly until 2007.

Rhys ab Owen says that his father is “in the advanced stages of dementia and his speech has been affected greatly.” Like many other families, they’ve seen little of him over the last year or more of the pandemic. 

Amongst the effects of the illness is that he’s largely forgotten Welsh, which is a cruel blow for someone who devoted so much of his life to campaigning for the language and for the rights of Welsh speakers. 

“He learned Welsh as an adult,” Rhys tells me, “and he's very passionate about the Welsh language. He was a huge campaigner for Welsh medium education in Cardiff and a Welsh establishment here in Cardiff, and he used to correct people as well who had degree level Welsh!

"Welsh is very important to him, so it's been very sad him forgetting his Welsh, though we do have the odd words pop up now and again which always brings a smile to the face.”

I spoke to Rhys ab Owen outside Clwb Ifor Bach in the centre of Cardiff, now well-known as a music venue but which was established by Owen John Thomas and others as a base for Welsh-speakers to meet and socialise. He was chair of it for ten years, and then its honorary president. 

“They were very depressed after the referendum results in 1979, and he thought, ‘we need to do something, practically… we need to do something which will revitalise the Welsh language in Cardiff, somewhere young people can go’ and that's when they came together.

"They collected money as a community here in Cardiff, and they bought the Royal British Legion club which is now Clwb Ifor Bach.”

While his family’s personal experience lies behind the question today, Rhys ab Owen says it’s more about campaigning for the problems of social care to be dealt with once and for all.

“I think, in a way, at the moment is too late for for our family, but we need to stand up for other families, people are struggling at the moment, something needs to happen, it's a huge problem across Wales and we're so dependent on unpaid carers and it's just not fair, we need to give them the support they deserve.”

“Wales led the way with the foundation of the National Health Service, it was based on an idea in Tredegar, and of Course a  Welshman founded it. I think Wales needs to take the lead again now, and establish a National Care System in Wales.”

In its recently-published Programme of Government, the Welsh Government has promised that it will 'pursue a sustainable UK solution so that care is free for all at the point of need and/or consult on a potential Wales-only solution to meet our long-term care needs'.