In noting the Equality and Human Rights Commission Wales Annual Review 2015-16, 'Towards a Fairer Wales', our amendment 3 notes that the Commission’s analysis has identified “seven key challenges that need to be addressed in Wales over the next five years, and that it will require the substantial efforts of public, private and third-sector organisations and of individuals to reduce these challenges”.
In other words, solutions to what the Commission describes as “major, entrenched inequalities and human right abuses” must be co-produced in equal partnership, acknowledging that everyone is an expert in their own lives.
As the Commission’s report states, these seven key challenges apply to:
- education
- employment
- living conditions in cohesive communities
- access to justice and democratic participation
- mental health services and support
- abuse, neglect and ill treatment in care and detention
- And eliminating violence, abuse and harassment in the community
As the ‘All Wales Hate Crime Research Project’ states, the “Welsh Government should take the lead on ensuring that accessible third-party reporting mechanisms are in place for victims who don’t want to report directly to the police”, and “more should be done to ensure that hate crime perpetrators are dealt with effectively and restorative approaches should be made more widely available in Wales”.
We will support Plaid Cymru’s amendments, although we would also call on the Welsh Government to work with voluntary sector and employer bodies.
The establishment of a gender identity clinic was in the 2016 Conservative Manifesto.
Our amendment 4 “Welcomes recognition by the Commission of the need to empower and engage with the voluntary and community sector”.
The Commission’s Wales Work plan 2016-17 includes:
- Promoting evidence to empower the voluntary and community sector and the public to hold the Welsh Government to account, and influence decisions and policy making across the public sector.
- AND engaging with public bodies and the voluntary and community sector in Wales to ensure the Public Sector Equality Duty drives improvements in public sector employment and service delivery.
As the Williams Commission stated “leaders at all levels will need to be open to different ways of working, including collaboration or coproduction’, and as the Auditor General for Wales states” ‘there is now a much clearer recognition that previous approaches have not worked as intended and that radical change is required”.
We must therefore move “away from a system in which people have their needs assessed and addressed to a system that protects an individual’s ability to make choices.
After Conwy Council cut vital services for the deaf community provided through the voluntary sector, I wrote to them stating that a principle of the Social Services and Wellbeing (Wales) Act was that individuals and their families must be able to participate fully in the process of determining and meeting their identified care and support needs through a process that is accessible to them”.
They replied that their response to the Act had instead led to their establishment of an internal integrated Disability Service.
The deaf community told me that their independence, human rights and rights to equality were being taken from them.
In support of an Autism (Wales) Bill, the parent of an autistic teenager wrote last weekend “I do not think that the social services and wellbeing Act is far reaching enough to support these very gifted and special people”.
After I wrote to Wrexham Council in support of the parent of a son with Downs Syndrome, who highlighted focus in the Act on involving people in how their care and support is decided and provided, the Council replied that the Act is not the legislation under which the tender process must be carried out.
The Act’s Part 2 Code of Practice recognises that the removal of the barriers facing people should be in line with the social model of disability – consistent with the Welsh Government’s Framework for Action on Independent Living, which emphasises the crucial role of employment in promoting people’s independence, confidence, health and well-being, providing a route out of poverty and enabling participation in society.
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However, when I recently wrote to Flintshire County Council after a conditional employment offer to a haemophiliac was withdrawn following his medical, they replied that they could find no evidence that the actions taken by them breached any element of this legislation.
Noting these and other realities, such as the Welsh Government being the only Government in the UK not to maintain funding levels for the Family Fund, supporting low income families with disabled children, it is clear that we need a new way of doing things in Wales.