Yes, I've got a lot I'd like to say about this. I think, in terms of that—and I know there's been a lot of discussion around the powers of inspection and entry, and in our written response we have said that we don't feel that the body necessarily needs that in order to fulfil their role. From a social care perspective, that is principally around, but not only, the fact that in social care you're talking about people, whether they're receiving domiciliary support or, indeed, in a care home—a care home is someone's home; every aspect of it is their home. And I know some people can look at them as kind of like mini hospitals, but it is someone's home.
So, we feel strongly that people have the same right as everyone here has in terms of how they manage their own home. That's not to say that we don't think that the citizen's voice body shouldn't be able to access people. Now, if the citizen's voice body were to tell us that a provider was preventing them from seeing people, if they wanted to see them or if people wanted them to come in, we would certainly see that as an issue and we would take that as a concern about that particular provider, because we'd ask the question, 'Why?'—'Why would you not want people in the home to be able to represent their voice?' Providers have, under the Regulation and Inspection of Social Care (Wales) Act 2016, a duty around quality and around having systems in place so that they can check the quality, and those systems—this could be an added value for the providers themselves in being able to test out what the quality is like.
I'm also aware that some people have shared concerns around—I think you described it as, 'In that moment where someone is having a very difficult experience, an ability of the body to act quickly.' And I suppose our feelings on that would be that where something is going wrong for somebody and something needs to happen, my worry would be that you've got a middle person then, and I would prefer that to come directly to us, so that we can use the powers that we have, not just of entry but also to do something about it and to get action.
And if you'll indulge me for a moment, we've got a very well-developed concerns process where people can raise concerns with us, and that would be the people themselves, their families, or, indeed, if the citizen's voice body was to go and meet with somebody, they could raise a concern with us. And I've got two particular examples of what we do with those concerns. Last year—I have the number here—it was over. I think, it was 2,150-something—excuse me, I can't remember the exact number—of concerns we received. As an example of what we do with those, last week, we had a concern from somebody who visited their loved one in a care home and were concerned about the level of activities that were on offer and they reported that people had said to them that they were not happy because they had nothing to do. Now, what we did with that concern: the inspector that's linked to that particular provision called the provider, spoke to them about activities and asked them what activities they had available and asked them to e-mail us to put down in writing what they were doing, and because we've got that relationship with providers and because we're the regulator, sometimes even a phone call can impact change. The next day, the person who raised that concern came back to us and said they could see a marked difference—the provider had reacted. Now, I don't want you to think that we just phone providers when concerns are raised. I can think of another example, and I was involved in this particular example, because I happened to be there. A concern came in on 23 December about significant concerns around people being got up early in a care home. At 5 o'clock in the morning on Christmas Eve, we were in that care home. So, we've got the ability to react quickly.
What I'm trying to say here is that, when things are going wrong, I would want those concerns to come directly to us so that we can go out, and when something needs to be done, we can use the powers we've got, not just to enter but also to make changes. And what that looks like is we can issue statutory notices to providers, giving them actions they have to take and timescales within which they have to take them. And in those circumstances, our view is that that would be a better way to deal with those. Again, that's not to say that we—. We can see that the citizen's voice body could really add value in the social care sector, but in those instances, I think it's best for those things to come to us.