North Wales Assembly Member Mark Isherwood has made fresh calls in the Assembly Chamber for the Welsh Government to give more power to the people, “doing things with them rather than to them and for them so that they move from being passive recipients to active participants”.
In a question to the Cabinet Secretary for Communities and Children on inequality this week, Mr Isherwood said the routes out of poverty won’t be accessed unless we tackle the root causes of the problems that people face, and that working alongside the people themselves will produce the best outcomes.
He said:
“Last week, your colleague, the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government told the Economy, Infrastructure and Skills Committee that the job of Local Authorities is to identify and capture the strengths and assets of people in that area.
“Co-production principles are about things that you say you support – equality and mutuality - working alongside the people, doing things with them rather than to them and for them, so that they move from being passive recipients to active participants.
“What meetings or discussions have you therefore had - now 13 months after its launch - with the Co-production Network for Wales so that you can engage, share and learn together about the methodologies which are working in communities in Wales, UK and across the world, and have been doing for decades, and can significantly help deliver the solutions that we all seek?”
The Cabinet Secretary replied:
“ I think the Member has several groups of individuals that he represents well, on the basis that they must come and see him on a weekly basis. But what I can say is that we introduced legislation here, which was the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, which embeds the principles of working together on exactly the issues that the Member raises today about co-production and opportunity.
“All of the well-being assessments are being created across the public bodies, and I would expect all of those to have respect for organisations that work across the length and breadth of Wales to deliver a better outcome for those communities.”
Mr Isherwood added: “”To expect” is just not good enough, because expectations alone don’t make things happen. This is a top-down cop out, when we need instead to break down the barriers between service providers and service users in order to design the system backwards.
“I do meet many groups and individuals on a weekly basis, because politicians can not do their jobs effectively if they don’t know what is really happening on the front line, what works well and what needs to be done differently.”
ENDS