North Wales Assembly Member Mark Isherwood has made fresh calls for the Violence against Women, Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence (Wales) Act to ensure delivery of healthy relationships education.
Responding to the Cabinet Secretary for Communities and Children’s statement on Progress on Implementation of the Act, Mr Isherwood said:
“Those of you who were here will remember in those last weeks, particularly the last week, how tense matters became, because we as members of the Committee that scrutinised it at Stage 1 had said the Minister should amend the Bill to make provision for compulsory whole-school age-appropriate education programmes on healthy relationships, and we still hadn’t achieved that at Stage 3. The Minister then came forward with some concessions that enabled the Bill to go through with unanimous support at Stage 4.
“Today, you referred to the whole-education approach, the good practice guide, the national education conference, and statutory guidance on education to make local authorities designate a member of staff for the purpose of championing violence against women, domestic abuse and sexual violence matters in schools and other settings.
“At Stage 3 and 4 the Minister had said the statutory guidance then would provide or include provisions for approaches such as how schools can drive forward a whole-school approach by appointing staff, pupil and governor champions, and it therefore didn’t require them. Can you therefore confirm that this will make local authorities introduce that staff champion? But also, could you perhaps respond or develop the omission here in terms of children and governors, who your predecessor had also referred to in this context?”
“You referred to developing a package of best practice for use in education settings across Wales. The Minister at Stage 4, and I quote, said:
‘Mark Isherwood asked specifically about how we keep up to date on the curriculum and the implementation of the Donaldson review’, which proposed that healthy relationship education is developed within the curriculum and followed by all schools. Your predecessor said ‘that is certainly something I will want to be reporting on’. So, I wonder if you could add comments in the context of the Donaldson review recommendations.”
Mr Isherwood also questioned the Cabinet Secretary over perpetrator programmes. He said: “In my contributions I’ve referred, for example, to the work of Relate Cymru and their voluntary perpetrator programme, which found that 90 per cent of the partners they questioned, sometimes after the end of the programme, said that there has been a complete stop in violence and intimidation by their partner. I’ve also referred to the knowledge and expertise of an organisation you also hold close to your heart, the Domestic Abuse Safety Unit on Deeside. I wonder if you can comment on whether or how you could extend your work with this to organisations like that, so you may access the front-line expertise that they and their partner organisations already have.”
He also spoke of the need for services tailored specifically to men who suffer abuse.