National Assembly for Wales

Prynhawn da. Welcome to the Equality and Social Justice Committee. All Members are present, so I've had no apologies, and I don't see any indications of declarations of interest. We're a bilingual institution, so if people are speaking Welsh, you can get instantaneous translation. You can also catch up with the proceedings from our disability and employment inquiry on Senedd.tv. We have three further sessions this afternoon on this inquiry between 2 o'clock and 5 o'clock, with short breaks in between.

I'm very pleased, in our first evidence session this afternoon, to welcome Daniel Biddle, who is an advocate of disabled people's rights. I'd very much like to warmly welcome you here, Daniel. What, in your experience, are the main barriers to work for disabled people, and how have these changed either for the better or the worse in the last few years?

First of all, thank you for inviting me along. I think the barriers are twofold, really. There's a lack of understanding around disability; there's a lack of understanding around capability. I think what we tend to find is that a person's diagnosis or a person's disability is always seen before anybody ever actually acknowledges the individual. If we go further back than that, I think there's an issue with the educational system in terms of how students with disabilities, special educational needs, additional learning needs or neurodiversity are treated and the educational outcomes that they expect. So, there's a whole remit of issues. I think the big one is the lack of understanding.

I think another issue is disclosure. From my own lived experience, whether you disclose you've got a disability or you don't, you're on a hiding to nothing, because if I do disclose, I know for a fact that it's gone against me in the past. If I don't disclose, and I turn up and I can't get into the building or there's no parking or there's no facilities that I can use, you're almost damned if you do and damned if you don't. So, the area of disclosure is a really big concern for me, and there doesn't seem to be anything being proactively done to tackle that. So, I think there's the educational piece around disability and what people are capable of. I'm a firm believer that within the disabled community, capability isn't the issue; it's the lack of opportunity that's the biggest issue.

Thank you very much for that introductory set of remarks. I wondered if you can shed some light on the fact that the disability employment gap is consistently higher in Wales than across the UK as a whole, and in some areas of Wales, like Neath Port Talbot and Blaenau Gwent, the gap is as high as 40 per cent. How does that reflect and inform the work you've been doing in Wales, given there's such a significant disparity?

I think what we tend to do is look at disability in employment in a one-section area, so employment is the issue; I think there are multiple facets to the problem around employment of disabled people. As I said before, there's education, the transport system. Wales is a predominantly rural country as well, so there's a big issue in the rural diversity and how people are able to access work. I also think that some of the provision that is out there isn't fit for purpose in terms of what it's providing, particularly to those more rural locations. And obviously, in terms of areas of deprivation, we know that disabled people are more likely to live in abject poverty. So, trying to clamber out of that quagmire of issues is really difficult.

I also think that the system sometimes is geared up to prevent the inclusion of disabled people in the workplace. I've got examples of people who go through so many different programmes and courses, and there's so much investment in getting somebody, as it's termed, 'work ready', but there's not the same investment in creating opportunities for individuals. So, we perpetuate a cycle of you go on this programme and do this, and you do an internship, and you work really hard, and you do really well, and at the end of it there's no job. So, I think we have an issue around the fact that the expectation is firmly placed on the disabled person. Also, it's much more difficult to access some of these services in the more rural locations. And when you look at places like Neath Port Talbot and Blaenau Gwent, obviously, with Tata Steel closing, that's a big employer, so we've got an influx of people now seeking work. As evidence shows, disability gets pushed further and further back, and I think there's not enough done to promote what disabled people can bring to an organisation.

Other witnesses have said that it's also to do with how vibrant the economy is in a particular area. So, Cardiff versus, say, Blaenau Gwent—

Absolutely, but I think if the transport provisions were more accessible, somebody who lives in Blaenau Gwent could be looking to find work in Cardiff, whereas at the moment, if you just take standard buses as an example, if there's a pushchair in a wheelchair space on a bus, you've had it, you're not going to be able to get on the bus. So, the transport system doesn't provide the level of equity that's needed to be able to say to people, 'Actually, you're not limited to just Neath Port Talbot or Blaenau Gwent.' If Cardiff is thriving through whatever and there are employment opportunities there, then why can't we have a system that means that's accessible to people?

Fine. Lots of issues there, which we will explore a bit further. So, Mick Antoniw, would you like to come in at this point?

Following on from that, you've described some of the provision in Wales as being not fit for purpose. I wonder if you could just say a little bit more about that. Precisely what is it that's not fit for purpose, what is it that needs to change?

I went through the interim summary report for this committee, and one the things that was raised in there was there was somebody who'd given feedback that, when they're looking for a job, they need to know whether or not the building's going to be accessible. So, when there are employment providers out there, one of the things that we don't have is the ability to understand how accessible the building is. So, this individual is saying that, whenever she is applying for a job, she has to go there before she applies to make sure that it's accessible before she makes the application. So, she's already got a bigger expense in this process because she's got to go there and look at it.

I think what the provisions are failing to do is to realise what it is, if you're disabled, to apply for a job. We all know, as we've all applied for jobs at some point in our life, we've all been asked for interviews, we know how stressful it is. If you've got the added anxiety of, 'Can I park? Can I get in? Is there a toilet I can use? Will I have an induction loop system? Can I take a job coach or a support worker with me?', and if this isn't factored into that process, again, it's not going to work out. My whole business is built around providing that accessibility information through the recruitment process because, without it, you look at any jobs board and, 'Yes, I need to know the rates of pay, I need to know the hours of work, but I also need much more information than that for that job to be viable', and nowhere provides it. And I think that's where that element of not being fit for purpose comes into it.

Is that something that applies across the board, in different parts of the country, or is this something that's a particularly acute problem in Wales?

There is nothing out there that provides the accessible information on a jobs board other than what I created—there's literally nothing out there.

So, when employers' jobs are being advertised, and some of them, of course, always state, 'We're equal opportunities, we provide et cetera, et cetera', of course, what it doesn't provide is what that means in practice, in terms of accessibility and in terms of the working environment. So, that's something that you think would be of significant benefit, wherever that is happening.

Absolutely. I think we need inclusive recruitment processes, and we need to be very clear on what that looks like. Again, in the interim summary, people were saying that some of the job descriptions they were looking at said, 'Must be able to drive.' If you changed that to, 'Must be able to travel', all of a sudden it opens up the demographic of who can apply for a job. But we've got this very structured, doing the same thing for the last 20-30 years, and we just miraculously expect a different result. If you want a different outcome, you have to do things differently, and I don't feel that it's been done differently at any point since I got my disability nearly 20 years ago.

Okay. Thank you. That's—

Mick, can I just cut across? Some job adverts say, 'If you'd like to know more information about this post, contact X.' Do you find that individuals do take up that offer if they've got additional questions, or do they think that might count against them?

I think it comes back to that issue of disclosure. If you phone up an employer and say, 'Oh, by the way, do you have a lift or do you have an accessible toilet?', the cat's out of the bag. Whereas if you can look at a job description and it says, 'It has level entry. It has parking. It has a toilet.', disclosure's irrelevant, because what most employers are frightened of is the lack of accessibility or it's going to be too expensive and all the myths and misconceptions that go with that. If you can iron that out straight away and have that information—and the way that we do it is we either visit the building or we have a questionnaire that we send to the employer—that goes on the job description. You create a profile of what you need as an accessibility need and we match that to the job that you want to apply for. That way, you know what you’re going to be getting. But we also have things like, ‘Does the employer understand Access to Work? Do they know what reasonable adjustments are? Are they Disability Confident?', for what it’s worth. We have all of that on there so that, if you are a disabled person, you can feel comfortable that, actually, the employers know about Access to Work, they know about reasonable adjustments and that your accessibility need is going to be met. These are the missing links around creating a more inclusive recruitment process.

Back to you, Mick.

Okay. Just moving on a little bit, then, Learning Disability Wales, with whom you’ll have had engagement, I think, has called for a national job coaching strategy, which would see disabled people being able to access supported employment support. Is that something that you think is important, something that you would encourage, or something that would help move this forward?

Absolutely. I think, for certain sections of the disabled community, job coaching is absolutely vital. I think what we tend to do is we look at disability as a homogenous group, and I think we need to start looking at—. I’ve kind of broken it down into three categories. There are those that can’t work and will never be able to work because of whatever reason, and, as a society, we need to do all we can to support them. There are those who want to work and can work but need a lot of support, and so something like job coaching, job aid support would come into that. And there are those that are work ready.

I think it’s really important that, if we have a national job coaching strategy, we understand how people access that, because if it’s going through Access to Work, it’s a fantastic scheme, but it’s very, very difficult, and the delays are so long that it can actually become a barrier to work, because there’s almost a 20-week wait at the moment. So, if you need a job coach and you’re offered a job, most employers can’t wait 20 weeks. So, you’ve got a brilliant system that almost becomes counterintuitive. If that can be ironed out so that we have a way of funding job coaches that people can access easily, and their needs are met, if would be fantastic. It would change a lot of the landscape for those with learning disabilities.

Thanks for that. Some supported employment provision is limited to 16 to 25. Can you just say a little bit about your experience of restrictions in the availability of support, how that works, what your views are, particularly in terms of support later in life, and what things could be done there and what recommendations you would make there?

I think the supported employment programmes are great, but I don’t understand the capping of the age. Statistics show that if you’re disabled and not in employment by 26, the likelihood is you’re not going to be in employment. So, when we look at apprenticeships, you can do an apprenticeship up to the age of about 50, I think it is, but we cap those who are the furthest away from the labour market by saying, ‘If you’re 25 or over, you can’t do it.’ So, for me, I don’t see the logic, or I don’t see how we’re going to improve the system if we’re capping it at that age. Taking me as an example, I was in hospital for a year, so, by the time I got out of hospital, I would have been too old to access any kind of supported employment programme. When we look at disabled people as a group, 83 per cent of disabled people acquire their long-term health condition or disability during their working life. So, if you’re a 21-year-old who acquires a disability—or a 25-year-old, sorry, who acquires a disability—you can’t then look at the supported employment programmes.

So, for me, I think, it's looking at how we can make this work so that there are tangible outcomes. Even if it is a case of having two separate systems, you'd have, kind of, post-16 education up to 25, and for those individuals that may have gone to university or acquired their disability later in life, a different system. But when we talk about disabled people entering the labour market, when you cap it, you’re already capping a group that’s so far from that marketplace anyway, it makes it 10 times harder.

And, of course, once you are in work, there's the issue of your career and progression, being retained as well, during the ups and downs of businesses and so on. Is that an issue, as well, that you’ve come across?

Absolutely. I think getting a job is 50 per cent of the solution; retention is the other 50 per cent. And I think a lot of organisations don’t understand the support mechanisms that are in place. I think a lot of organisations have had bad experiences when they’ve tried to go for Access to Work, so they’re reluctant to do it. So, we don’t have the support mechanisms in place. Also, disabled people are often very reluctant to disclose what their support need is and what their disability is because they fear it’s going to go against them. Again, the statistic is, I think, that one in five people have a disability or a long-term health condition. When you look at that, big organisations have probably got a huge amount of people with disabilities who are struggling, but they don’t want to disclose the fact that they’ve got a disability. So, we have an inherent culture that almost prevents people from disclosing it. That comes down to a lack of education. One of the things that I would love to see happen is—. I remember back in 2016, when I was living in London, the Government had Sir Alan Sugar come in as a business tsar, going out and travelling the country, talking about enterprise. I don't understand why we don't have a disabilities commissioner to do exactly that, and not just looking at employment but looking at all the facets that go together—transport, housing, employment support, education—to have a coherent plan and not have these things working in silos.

Thank you very much. That's very helpful.

Can I ask Sioned Williams to come in now?

Thank you, Chair, and good afternoon. I'd like to ask what involvement you have had with the Welsh Government's disability rights taskforce, which of course includes a working group looking at employment and income. Have you come across that at all? Have you been involved with it at all and, if so, any reflections on that?

I've come across it. The biggest issue that I've had, to be brutally honest, is, as I've met with various Members of the Senedd and I've met with various Members of central Government, that it's always, to be blunt, a photo opportunity. So, I will meet with a Senedd Member, I will meet with a Member of Parliament, I will meet with a Secretary of State, and I go in with a plan, with a solution that I think can be done. Because I'm a survivor of one of the biggest terrorist attacks in the UK, and I'm the most seriously injured survivor, it's a photo op. I go in there and I'll have an hour's meeting, and I've had it with a Member of the Welsh Government. We talked for about an hour and a half. The meeting really overran. It concluded with a photo op, and I never heard from them again. Yet, during the meeting, it was a case of, 'Well, we'd like to use you to do this, we'd like to use you to do that,' but nothing comes of it. And I think the frustrating thing for me is, like I said earlier on, if you look at the last five years, the disability employment rate has moved by about 1 per cent in five years. So, there's obviously an issue there somewhere, and what we keep perpetuating as solutions are not working. Disabled people are still finding it really difficult to find employment. So, let's be honest and let's say, 'Okay, well, let's try something new.' But every time I've tried to speak to somebody about something new, there's this kind of inherent fear about stepping away from what's already been done. It's just the same thing being done over and over again, and nothing's really changing.

Thanks. What, therefore, do you feel—? I mean, I can guess from your first answer what you feel about the impact of current Welsh Government, specifically, employment support initiatives. So, what opportunities are there? Could you give us a few examples of some of the things that you may have said in these meetings? What would you put forward? You talked about a disability commissioner, some kind of business tsar, and more of an emphasis on educating employers. Can you give us a bit of a critique of what currently exists and what you think needs to be improved there?

I think we need more representation of disabled people. When we look at role models for disabled people, they're normally sportspeople and Paralympians. Not everybody is going to be able to run 100m on blades or win wheelchair races. We have a viewpoint of disability that disabled people are either on benefits or Paralympic athletes. People like me who run their own business, we don't fit into the psyche of what disability is, and I don't think we do enough to showcase disabled entrepreneurs. One of my issues is that self-employment is often seen as the panacea to the issue about inclusive recruitment. I don't want to be self-employed but I want to work. My only option is to be self-employed. I've applied for countless jobs and always get knocked back, because I've always disclosed my disability. I think we need to do things like the roadshow that I mentioned earlier on—going out and talking to the biggest employers in Wales, making Disability Confident a prerequisite, so when you're tendering for a Government contract, you have to have Disability Confident leader status. When I was looking at the Disability Confident list of organisations that are, from the list I saw, we have one local authority that's a Disability Confident leader, and that happened in 2019. Yet, we have 14 local authorities that are Stonewall champions, and that costs money, and Disability Confident is free. So, unless we start acknowledging this and saying, 'Well, what can we do to change it?', and if local authorities and Government don't take it seriously, nobody else will, and if you want to drive change, you've got to lead from the front. Having one local authority in 2019 gaining Disability Confident leader status, and none of the others, doesn't send out the right message to employers to actually get on that journey to be inclusive.

And we've heard mixed views also of those UK Government interventions. Access to Work you've mentioned, and you talked in one of your previous answers about employers having bad experiences of that, and also I think you said about Disability Confident—and it's a view we've heard echoed from other witnesses—you've said, 'Disability Confident, for what it's worth.' I was wondering if you could just give us a bit more detail about what you think is right, what you think is wrong, and what you think needs to be improved with those two schemes specifically, and perhaps Disability Confident to begin with.

The Disability Confident scheme is great in principle. I think it's a fantastic concept. The problem is that it's not really managed in terms of keeping a check of these organisations. So, I was at a Disability Confident event for my local MP a few years ago. A roomful of employers spoke about Disability Confident, had a representative from DWP there talking about Access to Work, and we had a sheet of paper on the table for people to make a pledge to sign up to Disability Confident. Not one person did. Not one person did. I think people don't see the value of it. I think people are a little bit perturbed by such close association with DWP as well. And I think also that Disability Confident, the first two levels, 'committed' and 'employer', are self-assessment; we all look fantastic if we're marking our own homework, and if you look at the list of Disability Confident 'leader' employers, compared to 'committed', the 'committed' runs into the thousands, because it's a 10-minute thing you do online, and you get the nice little badge, and you put it on your website and everybody thinks it's wonderful. Then follow up with, 'How many disabled people do you actually employ?', 'How many disabled people have gone through your recruitment process, or have been shortlisted for interview?' Because the badge doesn't mean anything if you're not putting it into practice. We can have the best policies in the world, but if they're not actioned and nobody is doing anything with it, you might as well not have the policy.

And Access to Work: do you have any further comments on that? As I said, you said—you referenced that some employers had had bad experiences with it.

The delays are massive. I think the process—. So, I use Access to Work for myself as well, running my company. And the whole thing around if you move jobs, you have to make a new application, where your need might not have changed—and I know there are certain parameters around the size of organisations and things like that, but—I don't see that it makes sense to do the whole process again. It's an incredibly big workload for the caseworkers, who are already struggling, and yet we make them go through the process again. When you're self-employed, I have to submit my Access to Work every year to make sure that my business is earning enough money for it to be warranting Access to Work.

With my last experience with Access to Work, I had to have my caseworker removed because I couldn't get a word in edgeways. My situation's a little bit unique, as I say, through an act of terrorism. Trying to explain my complex post-traumatic stress disorder, I couldn't get a word in edgeways, and I was being questioned about whether or not I was going to be awarded it again. Without that award, I can't work. So, again, it's not the viewpoint of that individual to make an assessment of whether or not my mental health is such that I need it. I describe what's wrong, I say the impact that it has on me, but I have to do that every year, and I don't mean this disrespectfully, but I'm always going to be an amputee. So, there are things that I'm going to struggle with that I need support with. I'm always going to have complex PTSD. Why do I have to go through every year explaining the things that I can't do that make me feel quite inadequate? When really, if my situation hasn't changed, if I'm still self-employed, why can't that just be renewed every year? If I send my bank statement in and my company accounts, I've hit that threshold, 'Mr Biddle, there it is,' it starts again.

I had a seven-week wait of not knowing whether or not I was going to get my award and whether or not I'd be able to work again. That puts incredible stress on somebody with depression and anxiety, and, just talking about my own experience, that was an incredibly stressful process that took a massive toll on me, and it would do on countless individuals.

So, the system itself is fantastic in what it provides, but we need to seriously look at the impact of applying for it on individuals, and when I was talking about the effect on employers, it is that whole long wait. If you offer somebody a job, Access to Work say, 'Well, just provide what's needed, and, if the award's granted, then you can claim it back.' But what if it isn't granted? Now you've got an employer who is potentially going to be like, 'We've just spent £20,000 on furniture and desks and whatever. That's come off our bottom line and we can't claim it back.' So, then we start getting these myths around, 'It's more expensive to employ a disabled person.' And it's fed in because of this whole disparity in how the system works.

Yes, thank you. Thank you so much. Diolch, Cadeirydd.

Very good. Can I hand over to Julie Morgan now, please?

Thank you, and good afternoon.

Afternoon.

It's very good to see you here. We've already talked a bit, I think, about employers' attitudes towards disability, but we've been told during this inquiry that that is one of the biggest barriers: employers' attitudes. Learning disability was specifically mentioned, but, obviously, all kinds of disability. So, I just wondered if you could say a bit more about your experiences of working with employers.

I've got a couple of fantastic employers that I work with, where I've placed people that literally couldn't find work anywhere. So, am I able to give examples, or—?

Yes, it's fine.

So, I worked with a young man who's profoundly deaf. He worked for a construction company, and he was basically a yard hand, but he had done so many different qualifications it was a waste of his skill set. The pandemic hit; he was made redundant. Every time he applied for a job, he disclosed that he was profoundly deaf, and the response was, 'Oh, no, it's a health and safety risk. We can't do that.'

I was put in touch with him through a contact that I know, and I sat down with him and said, 'Right, what is it you want to do?' Through his interpreter, we worked out what it was he wanted to do. I worked out a support package that would work for him, so we created a document that is a support passport for an individual. So, we filled that out, and I went to a company that I'd been working with as a consultant previously, a big construction company in Cardiff, and said, 'Look, I've got this lad, he's got a fantastic skill set. Would you be interested in giving him a job?' They went, 'We're always looking for good people. Brilliant.' I'd already spoken to the individual and said, 'Can I disclose you're deaf?' He said, 'Absolutely.' So, I said, 'The thing is, he is profoundly deaf.' 'Oh, no, hold on a minute.'

Once we had the conversation around, 'Well, we can get this support. It works like this. It keeps him safe, it keeps other members of staff safe, and it can be funded by Access to Work', they went, 'Yes, okay, do it.' So, we had a six-week paid work placement for him. Within two weeks, he was offered a full-time contract. He's now been there three years, and we've got project managers fighting over who's going to be taking him on to site, because he's that good. No other construction company would give him the time of day, but we have a different approach to what we do, and we make sure that that fits in with what he needs and that it's going to work for the employer as well.

Another example, I'm a fellow and governor of Bridgend College, and I was working with some of their SEN students at Bridgend. There was a young lady doing a catering course, who has a learning disability and was told that the likelihood was she would never be able to work. I just sat down with her and had a cup of coffee, and I said to her, 'Why do you think you can't work?' She went, 'Well, it's just never been discussed.' I said, 'No, why do you think you can't work?' Her biggest barrier was transport, public transport. She couldn't work out the bus times, bus journeys and things like that. So, I said, 'Well, what if I could get you a taxi to take you to and from work?' She went, 'I think I could work.' So, we got her a job with an organisation in the catering side of things. They put on events and different bits and pieces. She started off doing two days a week, she now works full time. The chef she works under has said if he ever leaves, he's taking her with him.

These are people that had no prospects of employment, but the way that we do it is so person centred, because that's how you get the results. The actual employers, I was very lucky that, after having conversations and demonstrating what could be done and how it could work, they were very much on board. I've had conversations with employers where they just don't understand what it is to be disabled and how that can benefit the workplace.

We talk a lot about the social model of disability. If you then pressure test that—. So, I deliver training around neurodiversity and all different things to organisations, and I will put a slide up that says, 'What is it to be autistic?' All I get is all the negative connotations of being autistic. Nobody looks at hyper focus, attention to detail, task orientated. We revert very quickly back to the medical model, but all these organisations purport to be—'Oh, we adopt the social model.' You say you do, but, when you pressure test it, you actually revert back to the medical model. You revert back to what is perceived to be the problem with the individual, rather than what your barriers are in terms of having that person enter the workplace. So, for me, the attitude is very much, 'We want to look like we're doing the right thing, and we'll adopt the social model,' but, if you pressure test it, it reverts very quickly back to the medical model.

Yes, and what's made the difference has been this personal intervention, really, concentrating on the personal, and that has really changed employers' attitudes.

I think one of the reasons that's been successful is—. I get it all the time, being a chair user. I go somewhere and they may have a very, very steep ramp, where you'd need Sherpa Tenzing to help you get up it. The response I get is, 'Oh, well, we had a wheelchair user two weeks ago, they went up it.' That's great. That's them, that's not me. The way I sit in my chair because of my amputations, the way my hips are aligned, all the muscle groups that I use are different to somebody with a spinal injury, so I'm incredibly top-heavy. So, on very steep ramps, I tip backwards. So, it's about understanding how somebody works and moves around an environment to make that environment accessible. We can't have, unfortunately, a generic one-size-fits-all, because every disabled person is individual in terms of their needs, their capability and what they want to do. And that comes back to that kind of group of three different sets of disabled people. And I think if we started to look at it in that way, we would start deriving greater results because it becomes more person-centred.

So, looking at the employers, is there any one sector that is worse or better than others?

I think they're pretty much all—

All the same.

Yes. Pretty much all the same. I think, whether you're looking at hospitality, whether you're looking at construction, whether you're looking at banking or whatever. The issues, as I said before, go beyond just the levels of employment; it's about how you are actually going to get to work. So, it's such a multifaceted societal problem that the employers are a big part of that because their processes aren't inclusive, the application process isn't inclusive, the job descriptions aren't inclusive. So, you start stripping that back, but we still have to deal with, 'Well, actually, if that person doesn't drive, how are they going to get to work?' And it needs a broader spectrum, looking at it in terms of what are the key factors to make this successful.

Right. I was interested in what you said about self-employment, because I think what you said was that you're self-employed because you couldn't get a job, basically.

Yes.

So, you don't think there's any great desire, more than the rest of the population, for disabled people to be self-employed.

I think it's almost the go-to position to almost push self-employment as a route into work. When you live with a disability, when you live with a mental health condition, you have the same stresses and strains as those who don't have a disability but you also have a million more because of your disability or mental health condition. So, being self-employed is also a massive stressor that can exacerbate a condition. Because I think one of the things that I have to worry about is my tax returns and making sure that everything is filed with HMRC. There are all the additional stresses that somebody who is in employment doesn't have. And we're often talking about people who may have a mental health condition, such as anxiety. Imagine submitting your tax return and the anxiety you have until you get it back from HMRC to say whether or not it's right and how much tax you owe. So, there are all these different things that make self-employment the only option for people, but it can exacerbate what somebody is dealing with on a day-to-day basis. And there's no guaranteed income from it as well; I'm not guaranteed to earn money in the business that I have, because the other issue is, I'm a disabled person, going out, trying to get work, and, if I can't get a job with organisations, how are they going to be feeling about employing me as a contractor?

Right. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Joel James.

I think Mick wants to come in.

Oh, sorry, Mick.

Just a question on the self-employment issue, because, of course, once you are self-employed, you only have limited access, then, to benefits if you become unemployed subsequently. And, of course, a lot of self-employed people are in and out of work. Presumably, that must be something that's an even greater, additional challenge, isn't it, that, if you are self-employed, you only get one bite at, certainly, universal credit, for example. Am I on the right track here, or is there is an issue there as well?

I definitely think the benefits system plays a huge part in the whole arena of employment for disabled people, but particularly when you're self-employed. So, as an example, if I decided that I wanted to move and buy a house, being self-employed, I wouldn't be able to get a mortgage, because with my disability and with running my own company, I've obviously got to demonstrate x amount of years of trading and revenue and things like that. So, I've got the additional barriers that most other people don't face in terms of being disabled and being self-employed, but the biggest one as well is that I almost have to convince employers that they can trust me to do a good job. And again, with the whole benefits system, people are often reluctant to try and get into work, because they're worried about losing their benefits, so if their benefits stop, they're in work for a month, it doesn't work out, now they've got to go back into the system and try and get everything restarted again, and that takes a protracted period of time. So, it's almost—. I think, sometimes, it becomes a way of looking at it, 'Well, I can't risk getting a job in case everything else stops, and that's going to put me off, and that's going to mean that life gets even harder.' And believe you me, it's hard enough when you've got a disability, to have all these additional stresses on top of it, sometimes it feels like an insurmountable mountain.

Okay. Thank you. 

Thank you. Joel James. 

Thank you, Chair, and thanks ever so much for coming in this afternoon. I just wanted to ask two questions, really, if I could, around education and training. Some of the evidence that we've had previously has said that if you started to address education inequalities for disabled people, that would have a massive impact then on employment inequalities. And I just wanted to get your take on that. Is that something that you think, 'Yes, I think that's right'? And what could be done to address that then?

I definitely think that the inequalities in the education system play a huge part. We know that educational outcomes for SEN and ALN students aren't as high as for their counterparts. I think what we have as well is an issue around resources and funding for teaching assistants and classroom assistants around SEN and ALN students. I think the educational healthcare plan also plays a role, because it's incredibly difficult, from what I've read, to get a plan. A lot of the employment opportunities around supporting employment you can't access unless you've got an education, health and care plan. There's a huge wait to get it. I've worked with numerous individuals who are neurodiverse and they didn't get the support they needed in school.

I think one of the issues as well is the Equality Act 2010 duties around education: they don't seem to make reasonable adjustments in schools, and they are simple things. I worked with an individual who couldn't sit in the middle of an exam hall, they had to sit at the back so that they had nobody behind them, but the school wouldn't make the adjustment to do that, and it adversely affected their exam outcomes. When we're looking at accessibility plans, again, part of the Equality Act says that schools should provide an accessibility plan. I've gone through pretty much every secondary school I could find online in Wales and I couldn't find one. So, these are small things, but they start to make a big difference, because if you're a parent of a disabled child and you want to know what that school does in terms of accessibility, in terms of support, the only way you can really find out is to send your child to that school.

And when we look at research that I carried out two or three years ago, the rate of exclusions of those with SEN and ALN is a lot higher. And I think that is also symptomatic, that there isn't the support, schools are not able to deal with what it is to have a neurodiverse condition or don't know how to manage somebody with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.  So, it's almost like, well, we revert back to a, 'That's a naughty child, so let's try and take them out of the way', so to speak, and I think that we have a system that isn't supportive of young children. I've got friends that have got children that are neurodiverse, and they are struggling—struggling—to get the schools to even acknowledge that there's an issue. And it's things like that that—. It's heartbreaking, because you sit there and you look at these individuals who have amazing abilities, but they're never able to fully use them and demonstrate what they can do because the system is so structured. They require a different way of learning, but it's, 'No, this is the curriculum, this is what you do, and if you can't fall into that category, then, I'm sorry, but that's your lot.'

You're trying to, particularly with something like ADHD and autism, put a square peg in a round whole: you're trying to force somebody to conform to what is deemed 'normal'. Unfortunately, there isn't such a thing as normal, because 'normal' means different things to different people. My version of normal, as an amputee and a wheelchair user, is totally different to everybody else's version of normal in the room. Who's right and who's wrong? Am I less normal than you? Or are you more normal than me? We don't have a structure of 'normal' because everybody is individual, and that individuality comes out more so when we start looking at learning disabilities and neurodiversity. We should be embracing these differences, not trying to shackle them. 

Thanks ever so much for that. I suppose the second question then is in terms of supported employment, supported internships, apprenticeships. The evidence we've taken is that they say,  'Listen, you know, there's not enough opportunity; these aren't available for those with disabilities, and when they are, they're all too sort of the same, like in the hospitality sector', and I just wanted to get your views on that. Is that something where you think, 'Yes, that's true'? If that's the case, what can we do about it then to address it?

I think that we are very much limiting in terms of where the internships and supported employment places actually take place. It always reminds me of, if you go into a charity shop, you’ll often see somebody with a disability working in the charity shop volunteering, and I’ve always sat back and thought, ‘Well, if you can do that, why can’t you work for one of the high street retailers and be paid?’ We just don’t seem to have the ability to marry up a disabled person with capabilities and employment. Even with me and my business, people think I run a charity because I’m disabled. I don’t know at what point in time we reached this viewpoint that disabled people can only really work for free.

I think that the internships and supported employment are fantastic, but my question is, ‘What’s next?’ If you go through a paid internship and you’re doing a job and you’re doing it well, why doesn’t that turn into full-time employment? Why is it then that you get put back in a system and have to go around again? I think that there is evidence of individuals doing really, really well and not finding work at the end of it, and I think that is quite damaging to a person as well.

For me, personally, whenever I was applying for jobs, I know what I’m capable of doing, I know what I can do, and to be constantly knocked back, time and time again, you reach a point of going, ‘I’m not going to bother anymore.’ It just seems to be futile. So, if you went for an internship, loved the job, did really well, and didn’t get employment, you are going to subconsciously think, ‘What more do I need to do?’ It stops then being about the person; it then becomes about the organisations and the businesses and their understanding of inclusion.

We talk about equality, but it’s equity that we need. We can’t have equality until we’ve got an equitable platform for employment for disabled people. Equality is this beautiful little desert island we want to get to, equity is the tugboat that will get you there, but we don’t marry the two up. Employers—the ones I’ve spoken to—have a very skewed perception of what equality is. I asked one employer for a reasonable adjustment and I was met with, ‘Well, if I do it for him, I’ve got to do it for everybody else.’ Well, nobody else needs that to do their job. If this individual doesn’t have it, they can’t work—that’s the equity part of it. But we get so bogged down with the whole equality agenda, we don’t truly understand what that means in terms of disability.

It’s the same with the internships. Organisations can have somebody there for six weeks, but to then look at what the legacy of that employment looks like for that person to come in, thrive and grow, there’s no equity in that process and there isn’t an understanding of what it takes.

Yes. Okay, thank you.

Thank you. Jane Dodds.

Thank you very much. I've got the last section of questions, so thank you very much to you and your partner for joining us today. You talked right at the very beginning around the whole picture that there is. I get the impression from you that you’d like it inverted—that is, the responsibility not to be with the disabled person, but actually the responsibility to be with the employer and society to take a different approach, but I may be putting words in your mouth—

No.

But my question therefore is: what would you like to see? If you had a Rolls-Royce model, a clean sheet here in Wales, what should we be doing differently? How should we be redesigning the process so that we are on this more equitable level for everybody?

I think what you said is exactly what I believe. I think there’s too much onus put on disabled people to be work ready, but then there’s no outcome at the end of it because employers aren’t inclusive or accessible and they’re not disability ready, so to speak.

If we strip it right back, what I’d like to see is—. If money wasn’t an object and you said to me, ‘Right, draw your ideal way of tackling employment for disabled people’, it would start in schools, it would start with the careers service and careers advisers, who are, again, under-resourced and don’t have the time to do proper career pathway planning for somebody who has a disability or SEN. What I mean by that is, what we do is we work with individuals and we look at, ‘What is it you want to do?’ So, if somebody said to me they want to be an astronaut and they’ve got very severe physical disabilities, that’s not a realistic job, but there are other jobs within that environment, within that industry, that somebody could do. So, we scale it back and say, ‘Well, look, how about looking at this? This is what you need to get into it, this is the level that you need to work at.’

So, we build a plan, we look at what support’s needed, and we build that plan ready to go to Access to Work with it. We're proactive with it, not reactive to it. So, having careers advisors that can have the time—. Because it does take a bit longer, and the careers advisors and careers services that I've spoken to have all said that, that it is a time and resources issue. So, having something bespoke around SEN, ALN and neurodiversity would be fantastic. But also, in terms of employers, it would be great to actually go out and use disabled people that are in employment, that are working, as role models—have them going into schools and talking about what's possible, but also showing employers what is doable.

I think one of the big things as well—I'm always amazed that it gets overlooked—is that we have positive action within the Equality Act, but people don't understand what it is. It's used as a tokenistic tick box, which becomes positive discrimination, which is illegal, but organisations don't understand what positive actions actually mean. They don't understand a reasonable adjustment; they don't understand Access to Work. So, there is a huge education piece to go out and meet with employers, and talk with employers, and the bottom line is to lie out a fact that there is legal duty on them to be inclusive. And I don't mean that if I wheeled up to a job as a chief executive of, I don't know, Microsoft, that they should give it to me because I'm disabled, but that shouldn't discount me from it, if I've got the skills required to do it, but we live in a world where it does.

My background's construction. I was a construction manager when I got blown up. I couldn't get a job in my own industry, just because of the fact I'm disabled, because there was no understanding of what could be done. I lost my legs, I didn't lose my knowledge or my skillset, but the assumption is, as soon as you're disabled, that's it.

The reason I started my business, and the reason I'm passionate about it, is that, after the Manchester terror attacks, which were aimed at children, some of those children would have ended up with injuries like mine. And as a child, we are saying now, 'You want to be a nurse or a doctor? Forget that.' How do we know we're not stifling the person who finds a cure for cancer in 20 years' time because they sit in a wheelchair or they walk with crutches?

We need to educate employers, we need to start making sure that Disability Confident—. If the Welsh Government doesn't think it's fit for purpose, let's create one that is. Let's have a kitemark or a benchmark that actually means something. If local authorities can spend the £3,500 it takes to become a Stonewall champion—and there were 14 of them on the list, that's £49,000—and yet we have one Disability Confident leader in a local authority, that's shameful, bearing in mind that Disability Confident is free. So, it makes you feel like disability isn't on the same level as other protected characteristics.

Thank you. I was going to ask you about that. What would it be as well for employers to be able to either go through a process or to demonstrate that they'd had an awareness-raising process in terms of that education, and in terms of awareness of the legal framework as well—so, something like a kitemark, or something that you could see that says, 'Yes, that employer has really understood their responsibilities'? 

Absolutely. I think that when we talk about a kitemark, and we talk about inclusive recruitment and things like that, we have to understand that every organisation's on a journey. Some are much further down the line than others; others don't have a clue where to start, so it's almost like, 'If we just plead ignorance, we can avoid it, because we don't know how to start.' It's not difficult; it's just taking a different approach to it. And I think that the frustrating thing is that we have such shortages of staff in so many sectors across industry, and we have a talent pool of disabled people. As I said earlier, 83 per cent of disabled people acquired their disability or long-term health condition during their working life, and a large proportion of those do end up unemployed. We have a talented skillset and a talented pool of individuals who are disabled that could come into these organisations and start working, but we don't have the wherewithal to look at how we make that process inclusive and accessible for people.

Thank you. I've just got one more question, if that's all right, and it's about the Welsh Government. I was really surprised to hear from you that we've moved the disability employment gap by 1 per cent in five years. I'm a great advocate of targets, as in I think that they really can be helpful, but I just wondered from you what you think the Welsh Government needs to do in order to change the picture here in Wales.

First and foremost, I think working with individuals with lived experience: people that have tried to find employment; people that have been blatantly disregarded because they have a disability, and I mean kind of pan-disability, so individuals with learning disabilities, neurodiversity, the whole spectrum—to have them working and saying, ‘Actually, this is my experience’, and the more experiences we can understand, good, bad or indifferent, we can start to build a bit of a process around, ‘Well, we know that this particular sector has real barriers to employing disabled people’, because we know that out of a consultation of 10,000 people, 3,000 applied to work in this sector and not one of them got a job. Fair enough.

We start looking at the Disability Confident programme. For employers that are down as disability confident employers, they must have data in terms of who's asked for reasonable adjustments, members of staff who have applied, or candidates who have applied for a job and disclosed they've got a disability. If you've got organisations where they're saying, ‘We don't have anybody disclosing a disability, we don't have any disabled members of staff’, the reality is you do, but they're either masking it or they won't disclose it. So now it's a cultural thing. So we need to start changing the culture around businesses to be more inclusive. I was at an event, it was a Welsh Government event, and a local authority had got ‘disability confident employer’, and they were all celebrating how wonderful it was. And I just turned around and said, ‘How many disabled people have you interviewed in the last 12 months?’ ‘None.’ ‘How many disabled people have asked you for a reasonable adjustment?’ ‘None.’ ‘What are you celebrating then?’ I don't mean that disrespectfully, but it was more about having the badge and the logo than actually having the people in place. Disability Confident for me has become something that is more about looking good than being good. And we need to flip that. It's cheaper to be good than look good, that's for sure, because most adjustments for employment don't cost a lot of money.

I always say to people, 'I save organisations money, I've got my own chair'. I make light of it. But this whole thing about, 'Disabled people have more time off sick', I always turn around and say, ‘Why does me not having legs mean I'm more likely to be off sick than any one of you?’ It's nonsense that's almost become fact, and nobody's challenged it. And that's where I think Welsh Government can have the biggest impact is to challenge this. Start pushing this as: there's a legal duty to be inclusive under the Equality Act, but it's good business sense. There are case studies out there of businesses—the more diverse, the more productive are the kind of stats that I've seen, but we don't do enough to promote that.

Thank you very much. Diolch yn fawr, Cadeirydd.

Before you leave, you're clearly running a sector-leading company, and you seem to have—I don't understand why you're not being headhunted, because you've got your disability assured recruitment certificate, your development and recruitment induction strategy, your retention and development strategy. When we interviewed Professor Debbie Foster, who has been chairing the disability rights group and was also the author of the ‘Locked out’ report, she and other academics mentioned the need for a kitemark, and how the disability sector was weaker and the LGBT community have their own kitemark. It sounds like you pretty much have done all the legwork, if you'll excuse the pun. So how do you earn your money? Because you said you're a business, not a charity. Is it possible to find out how many employers have engaged your services? Or do individuals who want your support to get a job pay you somehow? How do you actually earn your living?

There are two strands to my business. I've got an online jobs board and I've got a consultancy. So, because my background is construction, I've got an access consultancy. I advise on how you make buildings more accessible, new builds, whatever it may be. That's the part that generates the income. The recruitment is really, really difficult, because I've tried to access Welsh Government funding for various projects around recruitment, but it seems to be so tightly ring-fenced that certain organisations, the minute it comes out, that money is almost allocated to them straight away. You can't get into, get Welsh Government funding for the recruitment process because there are recruitment companies out there that are the go-to ones for Welsh Government.

I have tried countless times. I've spoken to my MP, I've spoken to my Assembly Member, I've met with Assembly Members to say, ‘How do I get into this little cohort of organisations that get allocated the funds to do this?’ Because I firmly believe that what I built is based on all the barriers that I faced. When I looked at the interim summary report that was written and I saw that individual say that she needs to know about the accessibility of the building, I've had this website live since 2022—it does exactly that—but I've not been able to get in front of somebody to sit down and say 'This is how we make this work'. I'm not purporting to be a genius or anything like that; I'm a solutions-based person, I saw what the problem was, I saw that there was a lack of understanding, and I created a model to fix it. 

So, just one of the things that we do—. I do what's called a task analysis. So, an employer comes to me and says 'We've got this job; this is what the job involves'. So, I sit there and I break down what parts of that job would be a barrier. So, let's say it's in an engineering plant and it says that you must be able to stand for eight hours a day. Well, actually, if that person's got a back issue, they're not going to be able to do that. If they've got a perching stool and they're on a production line, they can do it. So, you look at how you overcome that barrier. That way, when you're sitting down with the employer you can say, 'Actually, it doesn't need to say that because we can do this'. If it's a really loud environment and there's somebody that's overstimulated by loud noises, 'We can do this'. It's about being proactive and presenting a solution before what's deemed to be a problem arises, and I've got enough experience and knowledge to be able to do that and present to a business a plan that makes their recruitment process accessible. So, the RADs and RAIDs that you were talking about, the recruitment and induction development system literally starts at point zero: 'You've got a job that you need to fill, this is what your process is, and these are the barriers that are preventing disabled people from applying for it. So, if we do this, we get a bigger pool of people applying for the job'. But unless that's actually put out there—.

My business, at the moment, I'm never going to be rich doing it because I'm pushing against a system that isn't designed for a business like mine to come into it, because it's been done one way for so long there seems to be a reluctance to do something new. When I said earlier on, if you want different outcomes you have to do things differently, I firmly believe that what I offer is the difference, I just can't get in front of anyone. That's the reality of my situation. I don't charge individuals, I don't charge candidates, so a lot of the work I do, I do for free because I have been that person who couldn't get a job. 

Thank you. Thank you very much indeed. I'd love to ask you 10 more questions but we've run out of time and we, obviously, can contact you outside the meeting. Thank you very much indeed for your excellent evidence and we'll send you a transcript so that if there's anything we've incorrectly heard, you can correct it. 

Brilliant. Thank you very much. 

Thank you very much indeed. Pleasure to meet you. We'll take a short break now before we prepare for the next session, which will happen in about five minutes. 

Welcome back to the Equality and Social Justice Committee, and our second session this afternoon. I'd like to welcome Nerys Bourne and Emma Benger. Nerys, you're the director of customer strategy and service development and Emma Benger is the Working Wales project manager—both for Careers Wales. And also, I'm very pleased to welcome Terry Mills, disabled people's employment champion for the Welsh Government. Very interested to hear from you as well. So, just briefly, to start us off, what, in your view, are the main barriers to work for disabled people, and how have these either improved or got worse over the last few years? Nerys, do you want to start?

Yes, I'm happy to start on that one. Potentially, one of the challenges, really, for people in work with disabilities is the constant change to the way we work. If you think about the advancements in technology, hybrid working, we all of us have to adapt and change, and that can be a bit more challenging for people with disabilities.

Oh, I think it's more challenging for people like me than it is for my granddaugher. [Laughter.] Isn't that a way of actually enhancing the ability of some people to work?

It can do. It depends on the individual, doesn't it? When we talk about disability, there's such a wide range of different disabilities. But it can be a barrier for people, I think.

I think another barrier is that employers have to adapt and give flexibility to people with disabilities who may be dealing with health conditions, and ongoing health conditions—maybe attending appointments. That could be a barrier as well. I think we've heard in previous committees about unconscious bias as well—whether that's intentionally or not intentional. That could be on the part of the employer or their colleagues who work with them. Rurality is an issue for us in Wales, and transport not being available and accessible, and the cost of transport—that's definitely a barrier. I think we've heard about employers not being able to make reasonable adjustments as well—that that can be an ongoing barrier. It could be access to buildings, to specialist equipment, to sign language, it could, again, be IT software. The other barrier could be that people become disabled whilst they're in work; that could be due to health, illness, or an accident. And some orgainsations have quite strict or rigid absence policies, which could be quite challenging and cause a barrier, unintentionally. And I think, potentially, another barrier for people is having that lack of confidence to go for promotion or to change roles—that they might feel that they haven't got the skills or the knowledge to do that, and that would be challenging for them and the employer.

Okay. So, you say that employers have to adapt, to make reasonable adjustments, but not being able to make reasonable adjustments. How does that fit with the Equality Act 2010 and the positive action that is required to accommodate people who may have a disability?

There are legal requirements for employers to make those adjustments. I think it's potentially lack of information, lack of knowledge, and lack of confidence, and, potentially, worrying about the cost of making those adjustments for people; having access to somebody who can give them advice on that could be a challenge for employers.

Okay. And lastly from me, before I hand over to other Members, the disability employmet gap is consistently higher in Wales than in the UK as a whole, and, in some areas of Wales, like Neath Port Talbot and Blaenau Gwent, the gap is as high as 40 per cent. So, through your work across Wales, how does that reflect on and inform the way you ensure that we are moving towards a society where everybody has the dignity of work? Do you want to start, Terry?

Yes, if I may, but if I could also come in on the previous question as well, because I have a very different take on the barriers to disabled people into employment. The main barrier is attitudinal, normally from employers, through lack of information, lack of knowledge. An example: when I first got into the role and I was speaking to an employer, a food manufacturer, with 400 people employed in production, and he said to me, 'My premises are not suitable for disabled people.'

On the basis of what?

And then, after talking to him, I found out what he thought a disabled person was, and the picture in his head was a wheelchair user. Wheelchair users make up 6 per cent—regular wheelchairs users.

Six per cent.

Six per cent of disabled people in Wales are regular wheelchair users. But this thought that, 'This is a disabled person', it's understandable—the blue badge, the accessible toilets use the symbol—but we have such a breadth of disabled people with all sorts of different impairments, he will already be employing a considerable amount without realising it. So, I think a lot of it are the barriers that employers put up themselves, because they don't know what a disabled person is, they're not comfortable with dealing with them. Reasonable adjustments, most of the time they cost nothing: the average is £75 for a reasonable adjustment.

There are all sorts of myths out there that are still around, unfortunately, with a lot of employers, like, 'Disabled people will take more time off sick'; it's actually the reverse to that. 'They'll be less productive'; that's shown to be untrue. There are all sorts of myths that still prevail, so it's a matter of changing the hearts and minds, it's a culture change, which will take a long time, but we need to get on with that culture change. So, it's more about educating, working with employers, to get them to realise that disabled people, we come in all different shapes and sizes, and most of us, actually, have non-visible impairments. We walk among you, and we're increasing all the time.

Since I've been in this role, there are more than 100,000 new disabled people in Wales. We're now up to 27 per cent of the working-age population in Wales is disabled. So, it's working with employers to break down these barriers that they have, and I think that's the issue, as opposed to small things about reasonable adjustments. It's working with them to change a mindset. It is hearts, minds, changing actions, changing how they employ a disabled person, that it is a positive experience for most employers.

And so, am I right in thinking that you're one of five disability champions?

Yes.

So, how do you get around the whole of Wales?

Well, there are five disabled people's employment champions employed by Welsh Government, and we work with larger businesses with 251 and above employees, plus the public sector and education. We have two colleagues at Business Wales, disabled people's employment advisers, who work with SMEs around Wales, and what we try to do is we try to work with a DPEC to many, not one on one, because there are 0.25 million active enterprises in Wales.

So, last week, we had meetings with the Joint Council for Wales, so there were 100 people there from all the local authorities and the trade unions, so we're speaking to many, not just to one, and we're working with those that will work with us. So, that's how we're doing it: we're trying to work with umbrella organisations, with groups of businesses, rather than on a one-to-one basis, because, obviously, capacity wise, that would not be great.

I understand. We'll come back to you. Emma Benger, can you just tell us how this much bigger employment gap in certain parts of Wales and, indeed, the challenge to make us at least as good as the average in the UK, how does that influence how you approach your work?

Well, across Working Wales, we're very aware of some of the lower economic areas across Wales—Blaenau Gwent and Neath Port Talbot, as you've just mentioned. In Neath Port Talbot, we're doing a significant amount of work at the moment to obviously support the Tata Steel redundancies and the workers from there, but I think the ripple effect from that goes throughout the community, so it's how do we get the message out there that people can access our services and what we can do to support.

We try and make sure we have a place-based support to our provision, so it's making sure that people who are redundant or people with a disability who have been impacted by that redundancy are aware of where they can come for that support and what's available to them. I think the biggest challenge for somewhere like Neath Port Talbot—the worry is where are the jobs going to be. There are developments going to be for what they're going to do on that site, but it's not necessarily immediately; it's a few years down the line. So, where do these people go in the meantime? What skills are they going to need? How do they upskill? Where do they go to retrain? And where do they find employment in the meantime?

So, I think, as a careers service, we work with these customers to just get a benchmark of what their skills are. Labour market information is very important when we have that discussion with them, where they can go for retraining and upskilling, and then what measures we can put in place to get people back into work as quickly as possible.

Okay. But sticking with the disability employment gap, how do we actually improve our performance generally across society, of ensuring that every disabled person who is able to work has that dignity of work?

I think it's making sure that people have that awareness, that they know where to come for support. I don't think they always know where to go. I think there are lots of organisations out there that do really good work, but not necessarily in a joined-up way. I think we need to do more collaboration, more locally and regionally, for people to know where to go to access support, and for us to all work more collaboratively with employers to spread the message, like Terry has said, that a disabled person doesn't just look like somebody in a wheelchair, that there's a wide spectrum of disability, and the advantage of having a diverse workforce. So, I think, again, it's education for employers to try and reduce that gap. I also think we need to do a bit more of a joined-up approach with organisations and agencies that can support people, so that they realise what reasonable adjustments can be made for them. A lack of understanding, a lack of information and education, I think, is the key, and a lack of good employment opportunities. So, again, employer knowledge there to be improved, I think.

Fine. Mick Antoniw, would you like to come in at this point?

Yes. You've answered some of the points I wanted to ask about, but you mention an awful lot about joined-up working, and I wondered if you could just say a little bit more. I mean, there's a number of organisations out there—Agoriad, ELITE Supported Employment and so on. How well do you work with those organisations? What is the structure on which you're able to work jointly? Is it all coincidental or dependent on the individual, or is there a framework within which you're able to work more collectively to pool practice and common input?

Okay. Sometimes it's coincidental because we could have any customer come through the door and all their circumstances are different and every person is different. So, sometimes, it is coincidental that we have to advocate on that customer's behalf to find the right organisation or the right support agency for us to refer that customer on for support, but we do have a team within Working Wales of stakeholder engagement advisers. They're a very small team—very similar numbers to the disability champions—and their role, really, is to actively link with some of these agencies, just for them to understand the wider offer of Careers Wales, but also for us to understand the support that they can put in place for people.

So, when we are working with customers with disabilities, we're linked up to these agencies already. We do successfully refer to ELITE and we're linked up with the Department for Work and Pensions. We do lots of events in collaboration with them as well to raise awareness, disability employment awareness events. They're ongoing now, actually, through October. So, we do link extensively with a lot of networks and agencies, however, it's a small team so then, sometimes, we have to drive the support, depending on the need of our customers, and we rely on this very small team to do some of that networking for us. We link in with Business Wales, like Terry also does, and there are lots of agencies there, and sometimes it's coincidental, but we do try and have a broad plan of the organisations we link with, especially the larger organisations.

On another point, I think one of the difficulties for us, sometimes, is that the landscape of support agencies across Wales does change quite considerably. So, it's not always as consistent as we would like. As soon as we've developed a partnership with a particular organisation, within 12 months or two years, they've gone, and another project has come into the area. Then you have to build relationships again to get to understand what that project is for. So, I think, again, more consistency in this space would be very helpful across the landscape in Wales, and it's very patchy, depending where that customer is from. So, sometimes, it's a bit of a postcode lottery as well in terms of what they can access. Yes, thank you.

Okay, thank you.

Okay. Julie Morgan.

Thank you very much. I was going to ask you some questions, Terry, if that's okay. You've already referred to the fact that one of the biggest barriers is employers' attitudes, and we've been told that consistently in the evidence we've taken, particularly towards people with a learning disability, which has come over very strongly. So, could you tell us a bit more about your experience of working with employers, and are there any sectors that are more difficult to work with than others?

There are sectors that are more difficult to work with: traditionally, things like construction. The mindset of construction. There are some really good employers out there, but they tend to be in the minority. There are certain traditional industries who employ a lot of disabled people. Construction, for instance, have a lot of people with hearing loss. If you've worked with jackhammers for 30 years, you develop hearing loss, but you're already on the job. Getting a job with them is harder then being in the job and acquiring your impairment and continuing to work, and it's the same with quite a lot.

On learning disabilities, we do a lot with them. It's great to visit ELITE to see and show what can be done. Norman Industries in Pembrokeshire. There's a lot of good work going on. The data's not great on that, which they collect in England. It's partial, which doesn't really help. I think Mencap has said 27 per cent employment on their latest survey, but it's still really low compared to many other impairment groups.

There are some great supported internships as a way in. There was one recently at Asda in Queensferry. They did a project search for the first time. They had a cohort of eight young people with a learning disability, and they were there for nine months. And at the end of the nine months, all eight of the interns were offered and accepted permanent paid roles. So, something like that, as a stepping stone in to work, where it's actually leading to work, as opposed to—. Unfortunately, a lot of people with a learning disability end up in constant volunteering roles, and not moving forward. So, it can be a programme, whether it's supported internships, supported employment, to get in to paid work, for there to be an end to it as opposed to just endless volunteering, unless that's what the individual wants. But we need to do more, definitely, for people with learning disabilities, to give them the opportunities and to share their lived experience.

I note that there are quite a few in health boards at the moment, who are going through supported internship and quite a few getting jobs. The amount that they can bring of lived experience, and possibly within Welsh Government, in housing, in education, in transport, only the people with those lived experiences can tell you what it's like for a person with a learning disability to access those services. No matter how good a civil servant is, unless you’ve got that lived experience, you cannot have that insight of an actual service user.

So, you would say there are some good employers there—

Yes. 

—but a lot more needs to be done. 

Definitely, yes. 

Yes. And that leads me on to my next question, again, Terry, to you, if it’s all right: Disability Wales said that the disability employment champion is an excellent scheme but has limited capacity. Would you agree with that?

Yes, because there are five of us—we cover the whole of Wales. And that is one reason why our strategy is working with the many, not with the few, to get the most out of the number of us there are. So, yes, obviously, we’re restricted by capacity, but we—

Yes. So, if there were more champions, what would you do differently?

Well, at the moment, we’ve got five real key objectives, one of which is engaging with employers. We would be able to do more employer engagement and the one-to-one work. We could do more partnership working as well, and you can get closer ties with some of the really large organisations, like the health boards, and work closer with the local authorities, but, then, also get into those sectors that are struggling, or don’t appear to be employing many disabled people, to try and get in there and give it the time that it needs to have the conversations, to explain about the social model, that it’s a good thing, and to also get the business case for employing disabled people. There’s a really good business case for employing disabled people. There are 237,000 of us who are economically inactive in Wales. It’s a great pool of talent, experience, expertise. Eighty-three per cent of them acquired their impairment as adults, so they’ve got experience.

So, it would give more time to have more contact with more employers to help change those hearts and minds and get those positive outcomes, and, hopefully, reduce the disability employment gap. It’s come down 2 per cent since we’ve been in post. And I’m not claiming any of that percentage for ourselves, because Welsh Government doesn’t control most of the levers. They don’t include employment law, equality law, benefits—all of those things. We do not hold the levers. All we can do is change the attitudes of the people who employ people in Wales.

Thank you. And, then, a general question, which you’ve already partially covered: we’ve talked about reasonable adjustments—what is needed? What action is needed to improve employers’ understanding of their legal duty?

I think, once again, it’s down to attitudes. It’s a legal duty, but some of the research we’ve seen is that one of the reasons they don’t employ in the first place is the potential for reasonable adjustments that they might need—what they think will be really expensive adaptations. You’ve got Access to Work, there, to help with the cost of that for most companies. But most reasonable adjustments cost nothing. It’s about doing things differently.

Prior to COVID—. I’ve had conversations with the Trades Union Congress, and, prior to COVID, the most commonly requested reasonable adjustment was perhaps some flexible working, and, perhaps, even, some working from home. And the vast majority of employers said that this was not reasonable—‘We’re not going to accept that. The IT systems couldn’t possibly cope with people working from home. And how could a manager possibly manage you unless you’re in the same room?’ And, then, overnight, there are millions of us working very productively from home, safely. And, for many disabled people, that was empowering.

And now the hybrid working—remote working, hybrid working—for many, not all, disabled people—some people are more comfortable going into the office environment or the work environment—provides an option that takes away some of the barriers. If you’re talking about transport, housing—. I was speaking to somebody who was working in the insurance field in Cardiff, on the outskirts of Cardiff, and she was working three days a week because she had chronic fatigue syndrome. The effort of getting up, getting dressed, medication, going down and catching the bus, going to work—. She worked Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, because she needed a day in between to recover, not from the work, but the effort of getting to work and getting home from work. COVID came and they asked her if she'd do an extra hour working from home, an extra day. Yes, she was more than happy to do that. A few months later, she went up to five days a week. Since then, she's become a manager. She goes into the office as and when they have team meetings.

So, reasonable adjustments that five years ago were not reasonable are now pretty standard requests in many, many workplaces. So, there are options. It's about doing things differently—that flexibility of work—and that's not just for disabled people. That really works for people with caring responsibilities. Our team doesn't have a meeting at 3 o'clock on a day, because our colleagues are going and doing the school run, and then they finish the work when they come back. It's opened things up for disabled people more than others. So, there are real positives, but it's getting employers to open up and consider these possibilities—all of these disabled people, all of this talent—and ways of doing things slightly differently.

Thank you very much.

Joel James.

Thank you, Chair, and thanks ever so much for coming in this afternoon. I hope you don't mind, I've got a couple of questions, but I think they're all basically aimed at Nerys, if that's okay. Sorry. But if anyone else thinks, 'Oh, I can answer this,' please do intervene. I wanted to get an idea, in generality terms, of the pathway of a young disabled person from school and how they would then proceed, then, from school into further education or into higher education, or into an apprenticeship or into training. I was just wondering if you could highlight how they would progress—so, the pathway, really.

The pathway, yes, absolutely, I'm happy to answer that. Just to start off, I just wanted to emphasise that ALN and disability are two separate things—they don't mean the same thing. A person could have a disability and not have any additional learning needs, or vice versa.

Currently, we're working with two systems in terms of supporting young people with additional learning needs. There's the old SEN code of practice that's still running alongside the new ALN process, if you like. So, we're in the last year now of the SEN code of practice, so, they are young people who are currently in year 14 in schools. So, Careers Wales would support those young people with their transition planning. We'd be responsible for developing a learning and skills plan for those young people, and that LSP—it's short for a learning and skills plan—would include their training and educational needs, so the support that they'd need as they transition into FE college or into a work-based learning provision. So, it's based upon the views of that young person and would have input from their families and other professionals.

Under the old SEN, the careers adviser would take the lead, really, on making sure that that young person would have a smooth transition into college. They would do things like arrange visits to the college, go on taster days, to make sure that they're familiar with the layout before they start their course. So, under the ALN system, which has been brought in under the new Act, the responsibility for that transition has moved over to the school or to the local authority—so, whoever maintains the IDP, the individual development plan. So, it's taken the responsibility away from the careers adviser in a way. Again, there will still be transition reviews. That will usually start in year 9, and that would be attended by professionals like Careers Wales, social services, health, depending on the needs of the young person.

So, the role of the careers advisers does vary now in terms of how the local authority are approaching that process. One thing to emphasise is that our offer is there. The support of Careers Wales and the careers adviser is there throughout the summer, whereas, if you think of schools, teachers won't be available to provide that transition support there. So that's generally the path that would be taken. I don't know if you want me to extend any of that.

No. I hope you don't mind, but I've got a couple of follow-up questions on that, though. You mentioned there that one of the differences there is that, obviously, during the summer holidays, the school can't really provide that transition support, basically at what is quite a crucial time. How can we overcome that, because that seems like a failing to me, then, and it's quite worrying? How can that be addressed, then? Is it something that needs to be addressed, or does the current help from yourselves take that burden up, if that makes sense?

The other thing, then, is that you mentioned there the changes that have come in since the Additional Learning Needs and Education Tribunal (Wales) Act 2018 and how a lot of it now, as you said, is transferred to the schools to sort out. I just wanted to get a better idea of the impact that that's had on you, then, and then your ability to support learners, but then also their families and that.

Okay. So, going back to your first point around that support during the summer holidays, that's a key part of our work and we've always done that work. So, it hasn't changed, really. Our approach would have that caseloading approach and we make sure that we're there during that key time of transition. We work very closely with families. We've got a specialist team of ALN advisers, and building that relationship with families is key to what we've always done. And that hasn't changed with the introduction of ALNET. So, potentially there are gaps in the provision available for young people with ALN, and that could be due to colleges not being able to have the resource for specific requirements. For example, we had a young person who had a hearing impairment and needed a signer in the college. The college couldn't recruit anybody in time, and then that young person couldn't start college as they should have done. 

If I may, Chair, I've got two other questions, then. I know, for example, that a disabled young person now can have access to careers advice and work experience from the age of 14. I just wanted to get an idea of how that is working out, really, if that makes sense, or what sort of impact that has had, and what more could be done to make sure that they have that support. You mentioned there, and it's been mentioned in previous evidence sessions, that there's just a lack of availability out there in terms of help, in terms of work placements, in terms of voluntary positions. But as you mentioned yourself, then, there's a shortage of BSL interpreters or support workers to help and that. I just wanted to get your views on that, then.  

In terms of careers advice at 14, under the SEN code of practice, it was a requirement that Careers Wales would start working with the young person at the age of 14. And that would mean starting that careers guidance process as well as attending transitional reviews. Under the ALNET process, it does encourage additional learning needs co-ordinators to provide impartial careers guidance for young people with ALN, but it doesn't specifically say when. So, you may get different approaches from different schools. With the ALNET process, there are 22 local authorities, which will have 22 different approaches to how they deliver this, and that has brought its challenges in how we work within that system. But we've got careers advisers based in every mainstream school and in special schools. So, the careers advice is available to all young people, and we would prioritise young people with ALN as part of our prioritisation. 

The other question I have, then, if that's okay, Chair, is about the apprenticeship finders and how they're tasked, basically, with going out there to find, basically, apprenticeships that might not necessarily even be advertised. And I just wanted to get a bit of an idea about the impact they've had and what more could be done to support or maybe even to expand on that, then.

Okay. So, the apprenticeship finders was something we were asked to do as part of the inclusive apprenticeships disability action plan, so we're going back to 2018, really, when we introduced that role. And to just kind of pilot that, I suppose, we had two people specifically become apprenticeship finders for us, and we did have relative success with just those two specific roles. Part of their role as well was to source apprenticeships from employers who were happy and willing to take on a disabled young person, but also it expanded a little bit more than that in terms of who were the customers already on our case loads, looking for apprenticeships and looking for work. So, it was almost a bit of a matching service, an early-day approach to matching customers with work.

As time progressed, we were then asked by Welsh Government at the time to really look a bit further into what does job matching really look like: do we have the capability to really look at someone's preferred occupation and skill and match to that demand of employment out there in the economy? So, the role expanded a little bit, and we had a job-matching pilot, I suppose, for 12 months. Unfortunately, that pilot was during COVID, so it wasn't the best time to test that. However, again, we did have great success. So, during that nine months, we sourced approximately 13,000 vacancies, of which about 10 per cent were apprenticeships, and we did manage to match people into those areas of work.

What we have today, though, is something very different again. We've taken the best parts, I suppose, of the apprenticeship finders and that job matching, and we now have a vacancy service as part of Working Wales. So, customers can subscribe to the vacancy service, whether they are customers of ours or other customers; non-Careers Wales customers can subscribe to that. We ask them for their preferred occupational areas, whether they are looking for an apprenticeship, and what their skills are, for example. And then we have a team, as I mentioned earlier, of stakeholder engagement advisers, and we also have a team of business engagement advisers who work actively with employers, and some of that is to source vacancies for us. And what we try and do then is match those people to those vacancies.

And the vacancy bulletin, once you've subscribed, you have a weekly tailored bulletin. So, everybody has at least 30 vacancies based on their preferred occupational choice or travel distance to work, and then they can have access to the wider suite of vacancies that we have as well. The vacancy bulletin goes over and above the apprenticeship vacancy service. There are more apprenticeships sourced on our vacancy bulletin than there are on the apprenticeship vacancy service. But we have the systems, they now talk to each other, so if they're on the AVS, they come over to our vacancy bulletin and then we source over and above that as well.

I think it's also important to add—and again, this is somewhere where we always try and link in with other organisations as much as we can—there's a lot of apprenticeships out there that aren't on the apprenticeship vacancy service, or possibly not on our vacancy bulletin either, but are linked to specific sector organisations and boards, like the Construction Industry Training Board have specific apprenticeships, and so do other sectors as well. So, I think, for us, it's keeping an eye on where all the apprenticeship opportunities are and making sure we can link people to those live vacancies. So, it's not about duplicating what's out there, but it's how our vacancy service can enhance the apprenticeships and other types of vacancies that we can put our customers onto.

Do you find, then, that there's a wide variety of apprenticeships open for those with a disability, or does it tend to be the same fields?

I would say there's a smaller percentage open to those with a disability. I think, again, it comes down to some of the points that we've raised already in terms of a lack of information and education for employers.

There are a lot of apprenticeships out there, but not specifically perhaps advertising or recruiting in a different way that would attract someone with a disability. Maybe they feel it would be slightly out of reach, possibly, so some of the recruitment practice around the apprenticeships as well—we need to think about how we could tweak that to make the vacancies more attractive or more accessible for someone with a disability.

But again, it comes down to some points that were raised earlier about re-educating employers there, I guess, in how they advertise those vacancies. But there is a lower percentage, absolutely, yes.

Okay, perfect. Thank you. Thank you, Chair.

Before I move on to Sioned Williams, I wonder if I could just ask Nerys Bourne: the brochure that was sent to us in advance of this meeting talks about the services that Careers Wales provides, including support for schools, colleges, training providers and universities to deliver

'motivated, inspired learners with clear plans for their careers,'

et cetera. Unfortunately, one of the people we took evidence from last week was Gerraint Jones-Griffiths, from Learning Disability Wales, who was the lead ambassador for Engage to Change, and he said far too many of the young people he came across with disabilities had never been asked what they wanted to do. So, I wonder what your role was to ensure that all schools asked every single pupil what they wanted to do after they left school. 

We were having a discussion about this earlier around that comment, and we were scratching our heads, really, as to what do we need to do to make sure that young people remember that they've had interaction with Careers Wales, because we do prioritise young people who do have additional learning needs, and we would see the majority if they are present in school. We do other activities as well. We do careers fairs; we make sure that we bring employers into schools to talk to young people. So, there's a breadth of things that we do. Whether young people are not making the connection then as to, 'Nobody asked me what I want to do', I'm not sure. In year 10—

It doesn't always lead on to placements, though, does it?

In year 10, we will do a career check survey with all pupils in schools, and we get about an 80 per cent response rate to that, so that gives us an idea of what young people's aspirations are and what they want to do when they go on from education. So, we've got that kind of data available to us, so I'm not sure that—. There is something we need to do. Careers Wales, we deliver careers guidance in schools, so we're in mainstream schools, we're in pupil referral units, we work with colleges, but we're one part of a bigger picture. I think it's more about what you were saying around that collaboration. We need to work with schools, with partners, with employers, with parents to make sure those messages are getting through to young people, and they're getting consistent, accurate and up-to date information that will help them move forward and make positive transitions.

Okay, thank you. Sioned Williams.

If I could just come in and hopefully clarify the different groups and what they're dealing with. The disability rights taskforce had an income and employment working group. That has now finished. It was a task and finish group and that finished when the recommendations from the taskforce went to Welsh Government. There is an ongoing group, the disabled people's employment working group, which has existed since 2018, which was originally created to look at supported apprenticeships but has since widened out to cover all aspects of disabled people's employment. That is co-chaired by the DPECs—

Sorry. The DPECs?

The disabled people's employment champions. Sorry.

Thank you.

And disabled people's organisations are on there, third sector organisations, employers and impairment-specific groups, and that meets four times a year and the DWP is invited and gives updates. So, that's an ongoing group for disabled people's organisations, people working in the sector, to look at what's happening and how we make it better—suggestions to bring forward with programmes and also initiatives and learning from each other. So, that's a really positive group.

Yes. The disabled people's employment group.

Yes. Quite happy to. Access to Work is often described as DWP's best-kept secret. When it's working and working well, it does really well. The issue is the delay; it's the implementation of it, the delay. It's a 26-week delay, currently, to get Access to Work. The programme itself is a really good system and it's well resourced, but if you can't get it and get it in good time, that is where the problem lies. We hold quarterly meetings with DWP and it is always on the agenda to try to find out what is happening with it, when it's going to improve, how we can mitigate it and can people claim, at least in principle, early to actually get the support. So, Access to Work is very good, it just needs sorting out in the actual delivery of it. It's an operational issue as opposed to a problem with the programme, I believe.

Disability Confident—

I don't think there's an enormous amount of information and many employers don't know about it, but the programme is to the individual not to the employer. So, Access to Work has to be applied for by the individual, not by the employer. So, it does need better marketing, better information out to employers so that they're aware of it, because many of the individuals won't necessarily know themselves that it's available to them. 

Disability Confident is one of those journeys that you'd say, 'Well, if we were going to start, we wouldn't start from here'. It isn't perfect by any means. Certainly, level 1 and level 2 are a good stepping stone. At least it shows that you want to do the right thing, but levels 1 and 2—. The expectations within that aren't too taxing, to say the least. They're also self-assessment, so, in some ways, you could argue that it's like marking your own homework. But level 3, leader status—. Our work plan isn't getting people onto Disability Confident at the lower levels; our work plan, particularly with the public sector in Wales and the larger employers, is getting them up to level 3 leader. At level 3 leader, they have to voluntarily report the numbers of disabled employees they have, and the percentage, and on a year-on-year basis, so you see how they're doing. They also have to provide guaranteed interview schemes for disabled people. So, there's a lot more. And also, they don't mark their own homework on that. To become a leader, they need to be validated by another Disability Confident leader.

There's also the problem—I don't know if it's pan-UK, but it's within Wales—that there are fewer than 40 leaders at the moment, and we want to increase that by a lot. But, for small organisations, to find somebody to validate it—. There are companies out there who want to charge thousands of pounds for doing this. Now, to me, that isn't what it should be about; other leaders should be doing that free of charge. The DPECs, the disabled people's employment champions have been doing—. We've started—. We can now validate those leaders, so we can go and provide that service to companies and businesses who want to become leaders. We can go and go through the validation process with them, so there isn't a cost on the company. If they want to do the right thing, we can help them do it. 

Yes, definitely. We validated the Welsh Government programme—the disabled people's employment champions. I think it was 86 pages of evidence, so there is a lot of evidence in there on policies, procedures, numbers. And, yes, we'd like to do that. And what we're also currently scoping out is creating a forum for leaders in Wales, so that we can bring those leaders together to learn from each other, to share good practice, and also to make it more aspirational to actually be a leader in Disability Confident in Wales.

Job coaches are really handy—we see it in all the supported employment programmes—and really help the individual, and Access to Work can provide job coaches in any role. I think there is a process there, but job coaches are really, really helpful, not just for that group but for many individuals. Job coaches are being used around Wales. I know we mentioned ELITE, Norman Industries. The supported internships run by local colleges and businesses, they all use job coaches. North Wales Together are using job coaches. Job coaches are essential for that group to help them through that journey.

Diolch, Cadeirydd.

Okay. There are various questions that we may need to follow up outside the meeting.

As I mentioned earlier, because we don't have the levers for these targets, we cannot change employment law, we cannot change equality law, we cannot change benefits and payments, but I'm a particularly sad data geek and I follow the labour force survey; I wait each quarter for the figures to drop, and that's sad. We follow that on StatsWales, and it has been coming down. As I say, we're not claiming any credit for that. But what's interesting within it is looking at the differences in local authority areas. As has already been pointed out, there's a big difference. It's not uniform around Wales, this disability employment gap—less than 15 per cent in the Vale of Glamorgan, and their neighbours are over 40 per cent in Bridgend. And within local authority areas, there are different patches of different take-up. In Wrexham, in the last figures I have, 91.3 per cent of non-disabled people were in employment. And if you take out those with caring responsibilities, those who've retired early, if you're looking for employees in the Wrexham area, where are they going to come from? You've got nearly 50 per cent of disabled people in Wrexham who aren't in employment. So, what do you do in each area to address this? The data really informs how you work in different local areas, as well, on your workforce.

We are working closely with the disability disparity evidence unit, particularly on the disability rights taskforce recommendations. They want to work with us to do the feasibility of—. A lot of it in there is what needs to be done, and so we're being asked if we can feed into how you do that. We are having discussions, and we have had since they've been formed, on also what data do we need, what can we collect in Wales that we don't have at the moment—and any suggestions would also be welcome. It's what we can draw out, because there's quite a lot of stuff, as you say, that's not Wales specific. Some of the data isn't robust, because of the numbers—the numbers are too small, and the sampling—so you can't really use them for some things. So, yes, we are working with it. We do not have targets because we don't have control of the levers, but we're doing everything we can, working with employers to try and get them to recruit and retain more disabled workers.

Expanding on what we discussed earlier, it's to have that greater connection throughout the partnerships, greater collaboration and then communication so everybody's aware. I think we've spoken quite a bit already about things needing to be a bit more place based, so having a national, regional and local view on what's available and what does that look like for each locality, and how does the data support where we need to go and where we focus. Sorry, that was a bit longer than 'one thing'.

I'd just like to wake up tomorrow morning with all employers being open, willing to work with us, and to lose all the misconceptions about disabled people and their abilities.

Diolch yn fawr iawn. Diolch, Cadeirydd.

Thank you. We were told earlier by one of our witnesses earlier this afternoon that there's only one Disability Confident leader amongst all the 22 local authorities in Wales. Which one is that?

Pembrokeshire.

Very good. Why do you think all the others have just not engaged with this?

We met with them last Friday and had a discussion with at least three that we will be helping to get to leader status in the near future.

Thank you. You mentioned, Mr Mills, that you have five key objectives in your team. Is that something that you'd be able to share with us? You don't need to say it right now, but if you could send it to us, that would be great. 

Yes, that's fine. 

Meanwhile, Careers Wales, I was particularly keen to find out a little bit more about the inclusive apprenticeship disability action plan, which is now nearly 10 years old. No, sorry, I beg your pardon, it's not 10 years old. It's nearly six years old; apologies. I just wondered what evaluation has been done of that, because we clearly need to do a great deal more. Has anybody done any evaluation of it? What are its key targets, and how far are we in achieving them? 

I believe the action plan went from 2018 to 2021 or 2022, and it was part of a Welsh Government policy area at the time. I was a member of that board, but I think the action plan came to an end, and I'm not entirely sure what happened since. So I'm happy to follow that up and feed back. 

That would be very useful to know. We'll obviously ask the Cabinet Secretary when we meet her later on. Otherwise, you said yourselves as an organisation set your own KPIs and targets. Are you able to share those with us so that we can see—? In relation, obviously, specifically to this matter.

Yes.

I think that's all from me, but if there's anything else, perhaps we can correspond with you. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you very much for your appearance. We'll send you a transcript and you can obviously come back to us if there's a problem.

We'll now take a short break, about three minutes if that's okay, before we meet our final contributors this afternoon.

Welcome back to the Equality and Social Justice Committee's inquiry into disability and employment. I'd like to welcome Andrea Wayman, chief executive officer of ELITE Supported Employment, and Arthur Beechey, chief executive officer of Agoriad Training and Employment Support, both joining us online. If I can start off by asking you both what are the main barriers to work for disabled people and how have these either improved or deteriorated in the last few years. Andrea, would you like to start?

Thank you. I think the main barrier is the availability of support and people identifying what is the correct support for them. If I could relate back to the Engage to Change project that we operated as a practitioner across 16 counties in south Wales—I'm speaking primarily about support for people with learning disabilities, learning difficulty and autism—the one-to-one job coach support that provides a holistic service to individuals was so necessary. When that ended in May 2023, we had no means of support as a third sector organisation apart from much smaller projects to support individuals.

We also lost European funding then to support individuals who were either deaf or blind or with hearing loss or sight loss. Individuals and employers need that level of support to reduce those barriers to employment, and that's whether we're talking about recruitment or retention of employment as well. And that goes across the sector, in terms of generic disability, if someone has a mental health issue.

Just to mention that we do have a number of schemes in Wales, but some of them are quite—. They're not old-fashioned, but perhaps they need to be modernised. We have an in-work support programme that supports people with mental health and musculoskeletal; that went out to tender last year. However, we are seeing a rise in people who are self-diagnosing with neurodiversity, we've also got more people with learning disabilities with ambition to work, and, yet, that programme did not meet their needs.

So, the main reason that programme folded—was that because of the loss of the European money and it going back to the UK Government?

And also because Engage to Change came to a natural end at May 2023.

Okay. Thank you. Arthur Beechey.

I echo everything Andrea has said. To us, one of the greatest challenges is the fact that, when we consider the employment sectors, namely the public, private and third sector, there is a substantial deficiency in terms of the public sector offering employment to disabled people. Apart from Betsi Cadwaladr up here, we've had very little uptake of offers of employment for disabled people. We've run a whole plethora of schemes, ranging from Workstep, the New Deal, the Work Programme, everything, but making the breakthrough into the public sector as an employment opportunity—. And taking into consideration the fact that the public sector is about 24 per cent of the labour market, that is a major challenge for us.

It would certainly be a major challenge as we don't have more than one local authority who's a Disability Confident leader, which is the only meaningful kitemark that is relevant, because all the rest is ticking a box and nobody actually checking up on your homework. I just wondered how that is possible, given that we have the well-being of future generations Act, which is mandatory for 46 organisations. Arthur Beechey, can you explain why nobody in north Wales, and nobody in south-east Wales, either—?

No, I can't explain it. In the report, it mentions this institutionalised ableism, which is a new one on me, but it does seem to be that the reluctance—. For example, in north Wales now, there's a North Wales Together project, of which we are a delivery partner over the counties of Anglesey and Gwynedd. And we're having knock-backs now already, trying to get their own people into employment, because, 'We can only offer work experience, nothing more'. Whereas with Betsi Cadwaladr, in fairness, they're not seeing it as a work experience thing; it may be a taster, but employmet is the aim. So, there are entrenched views there, I think.

The other thing, just going back a step, is viewing disabled people in the employment market as more than catering, horticulture and cleaning. With a diagnosis of autism, you can get high-functioning individuals who could be employed at much higher levels and in a wider variety of work. But there's a great reluctance. So, the employment of disabled people in Wales is basically falling within two sectors, namely the private sector and the third sector.

Thank you. I'm now going to pass on to Jane Dodds, to find out a bit more.

Yes. Go for it.

Shall I give Arthur the chance?

Yes.

So, for us, we operate very similarly to Arthur. We operate to the supported employment fidelity model, the five-stage process of appropriate assessments. We gain a holistic needs identity for an individual and we job match them appropriately, then, into the workplace. And some people may need pre-employment support. Through different funding methods that we have, we've operated DWP programmes in the past. We currently operate supported shared apprenticeships for Welsh Government. That's very specialised, with people receiving one-to-one support through the fidelity model, with a job coach supporting that individual and gradually withdrawing as that person gains independence.

As well as the supported shared apprenticeship, we've also operated supported internships, like Arthur, through Engage to Change; in 2016 we introduced the first model of that kind into Wales with Cardiff University. There are approximately 20-odd supported internships now operating in Wales, not just with our organisation or Agoriad; it's where colleges may operate those programmes themselves, working with a range of public sector and private sector employers.

We also operate social enterprises. Two of the social enterprises that we operate are part of Welsh Government's Better Jobs Closer to Home programmes, and that is a stepping-stone process to enable people to upskill, as they come into us, gain confidence, self-esteem, lots of soft skills and accreditation, and then move into jobs in our communities.

We're a Disability Confident leader—that's really important for us, to work with other employers, to get them considering Disability Confident, and have recently discussed a disability charter with both Disability Wales and Learning Disability Wales to take that through and hopefully strengthen Disability Confident with individual employers that we're working with.

The fidelity model, the job coaching model, is really, really important to us. It makes sure that everybody that we work with gets a personalised service that is tailored to their particular needs, and that we job match them appropriately into appropriate jobs. That depends on whether someone has quite a significant learning disability and goes into entry jobs in the labour market, but also we get university graduates who should be going into jobs higher than entry-level jobs, so that we reduce that disability employment pay gap that we experience across the UK.

I can talk about—. Shall I start?

Yes, go on.

Yes. So—. Sorry, Arthur. Go on.

So, you've got level 1 and level 2, which are self-assessments, and I think that's where the difficulty lies. It's very weak in terms of monitoring what people are doing; they've signed up to it. And that's not to say that we don't encourage every employer that we work with to sign up to Disability Confident, it's the relationship that we have with them, and I suppose what we're doing is checking to see whether they're actually practising what they preach. But the weakness around Disability Confident is the fact that it's an internal self-assessment for a lot of organisations. If we had something such as a Disability Confident leader, where you've got external award by another disability organisation, that's what gives it teeth to make sure that people are actually doing what they say that they will do. They have to prove it. 

So, for us it's about being very participative with this; we often have to lead with those links. For myself, I've had 35 years of working with Careers Wales, and in the last 10 to 15 years with various sectors of Welsh Government and training organisations and so on, but it's about us sometimes having to prompt that contact and be the instigator of that contact as well.

Thank you. Can I bring in Sioned Williams now?

Prynhawn da. My operations managers had some links in with the taskforce. I've personally had links in on a debate regarding Disability Confident and whether we should have our own model within Wales, and was party to that as a Disability Confident leader organisation. But that's about the only engagement that I've had with that group.

Yes, very, very similar to Arthur. It's continuity of funding. When you have funding for just 12 months, you can't plan against that. What we've seen, in real terms, is a reduction of the investment in supported shared apprenticeships to 60 per cent of what we had as the opportunity in the first year that we did the pilot, for instance. This year, for instance, on supported shared apprenticeships, we carried over 34 individuals across 16 counties. That's not a lot of people—two people on average per county. We can't enrol anybody new into the apprenticeship programme this year, given that we only started it in August, because we've spent the money for the whole year, and how do you maintain people's aspirations in terms of this? We’ve also got a huge barrier, with level 2 being the minimum qualification that someone has to reach on an apprenticeship programme, so you’ve cancelled out, probably, 80 per cent of people with learning disabilities or learning difficulties. And, also, deaf people as well, where they rely on BSL as their form of communication. I’ve recently had to make two staff redundant, because we weren’t getting the referrals for Jobs Growth Wales+ in the supported version of that. And, also, people’s perception of what we should be doing as well. So, we’re not a babysitting service; we’re about employment. We should be supporting people when they’ve gone into employment, appropriately job matching them to all of that.

Pathway 4 is a big concern for me. So, there is sufficient money being provided to colleges for pathway 4, and, as Arthur said, some colleges do not want to pass that on to work collaboratively with the supported employment agency. They feel they can do that. If they have qualified staff, I would not disagree with them. My only concern is, when we come to the end of an academic year, who supports that individual after that as they’re due to go into employment? And we’ve got the British Association for Supported Employment UK, who are doing some research with the National Development Team for Inclusion, and Project SEARCH at the moment on that. They’ve got some varying things, where colleges themselves are providing job coaching to those who are engaged with supported employment agencies, and, after six months, they’re saying that approximately 50 per cent of people fall out of their employment, because they haven’t got that continuity of support, because the academic year ended six months beforehand.

So, that’s a gap that we’ve got. I think we’ve also got a gap in terms of there needs to be a programme for people who, yes, could do entry level and level 1 qualifications and move into employment. There are a lot of employers who would be happy to engage and employ individuals, where the job only requires that level of qualification as well. And what we often see is that it can take three to four years before people can move on academically in the role that they’re doing, and be supported in terms of reasonable adjustments to achieve a level 2 in terms of apprenticeships.

So, I think we need to broaden and open up. And I do appreciate that the funding is very restricted. Jobs Growth Wales, as well, ends at 19 for individuals. That should go up to at least 30. We have young people with ALN—they leave school at 19, they then go to FE. They could be 24, 25 before they’re leaving that environment, and we really need to be maximising opportunities, because people and their parents have far higher aspirations these days in terms of employment, and they should be allowed to be on a level playing field with everybody else.

Thank you so much, that's very valuable. Diolch yn fawr. 

Thank you. Diolch. 

Thank you very much. Julie Morgan. 

Thank you very much and good afternoon. We’ve heard a lot about employers’ attitudes towards disability, particularly towards learning disability, and this is a key barrier to employment. What has been your experience of the attitudes of employers?

Shall I start? Is that okay? So, when we operated—. I founded this particular charity 30 years ago now. If employers are getting supported, they will be very positive about employing disabled staff. I think we have concerns around doing the wrong thing by employers, and employers, if they’re not receiving support, can get too hung up on that. Engage to Change is a great example of where we engaged a considerable level of employers with very positive attitudes to employing staff with learning disabilities. We’ve moved into working with the public sector. I believe that the public sector should lead by example. Arthur’s already indicated that 24 per cent of our employment in Wales is via the public sector. We are definitely not on a level playing field in terms of disabled people in employment, at 24 per cent with the public sector at this moment in time. So, there’s a lot of work to be done there.

Employers need support themselves, and it’s about the relationship that you build with employers, and how they are supported and trained to recognise the abilities of disabled people, not necessarily seeing it as something where legislation is going to be forced back into their face. So, you need to bring employers on board with this, and we achieved that through Engage to Change. The difficulty was that we didn’t have the continuity. However, those employers that we did work with through Engage to Change are still working with us.

Thank you. Are there any particular sectors that you would say need to be targeted? Obviously, we've talked about the public sector. What about any other sectors where there is a particularly good or bad record?

Well, I would stick with the public sector. If I could just put a bit more context into what Andrea said, I've been in Agoriad over 20-odd years now and during that period, we've run all kinds of things, from contract-based to performance-related things such as the work programme and what have you, and various European projects. We've probably got thousands and thousands of people into work, and I would say fewer than 1 per cent have been in the public sector. Now, that can't be changed, because that's historic, but I can't see much change going forward, apart from Betsi. Now, when we also factor in that the vast majority of our employers are SMEs—. And we're not talking about the Welsh Government definition of SMEs, we're talking the one-man or one-woman band, very often, in rural areas. But because of their sense of community, because of the way they've been brought up and the culture where they believe opportunity and equality are very important, they've always played a part, and that's been a whole thing from the slate quarries of Blaenau Ffestiniog through to local delicatessens and what have you. But to me, the challenge is the public sector, you know, and within the public sector there is a whole range of opportunity suitable for all ranges of disabilities. They're just not engaging. You know, I'm ashamed to say that we don't get any luck with the local authorities; we don't get any luck with Welsh Government; we don't get any luck with Natural Resources Wales—you know, you name it, we've tried it and we've got nowhere. And it's not because we put forward inappropriate candidates. That is the major challenge for us.

Yes, I think—

Can I just—? Oh, sorry.

Yes, Andrea, go on.

Just to add to that, as well, in terms of sector career-wise, there will be some employers that will have health and safety concerns, and again that's about the level of support that employers have and training and understanding of the needs of an individual. Both Arthur and our organisation train a lot of individuals before going into a particular sector that they've chosen. Health and safety is often something that we will train up, because what we have to do is allay concerns and fears that employers have around employing disabled people, and approaching those misconceptions in a very, very positive way and providing case studies where that's not the case. They simply are misconceptions. And then, that work, where you've been able to demonstrate to an employer that someone is safe coming into work, they will be an asset to the company and so on, and also getting employers in various employer forums to speak to one another—that certainly does help what we do. But as much as anything, it's that member of staff working with that employer, and also their team of staff as well.

Thank you. And one last question from me: what about self-employment? We have heard, during the evidence, that that is something disabled people may prefer because of the flexibility that's involved. What is your view of that, and do you think there is enough support for people who want to be self-employed?

Certainly, self-employment is an option that is more than suitable for a lot of people. Our own arrangement for that, because we've had a number of people go into self-employment, is that we use an external accountant. We make use of the business advice services locally as well, and if it was identified as a kind of embedded option, and if the Welsh Government and everything could develop the necessary policies and processes to do it, that would help it, because it would give a framework in which to operate, and that is something where the advice and guidance about the suitability or otherwise of self-employment could be introduced to potential clients much earlier on.

Thank you. We were told earlier this afternoon that many disabled people become self-employed because they can't get a job where they're not self-employed. I don't know whether you've got any views on that. 

Just to mention one of my concerns around self-employment—and I come from a family of self-employed people—is that one of the challenges that disabled people who have chosen self-employment face is that they'll get support from Business Wales, for instance, but then they can't get support from Access to Work if they want to start their business with minimal hours. And sometimes, when you start a new business, you've got to test the waters. But they're experiencing this barrier of not being able to gain the resources or the support from the Access to Work scheme operated by UK Government because perhaps they're unable to demonstrate consistent hours in terms of the new business, they're unable to demonstrate hours that meet the minimum threshold and things, and that in itself is creating a barrier to self-employment for disabled people.

Yes. Thank you very much. Thanks.

Thank you. Just moving on—apologies. Joel James.

Thank you, Chair. And thanks ever so much for this afternoon, it has been absolutely invaluable at the moment. I don't suppose I could just ask two questions, really, which will cover losely education and training. I know you've touched upon it briefly, but one of the things that keeps getting brought up to us by those we invite to give evidence is that, if you looked at solving the educational inequalities in schools, that would have a big impact, then, on the disability employment gap. And I just wanted to know what your thoughts were on that. Is that something that you recognise within your fields there and, if that's the case, what could be done about it?

I could go back historically. I started working life in this field in a college—it was Coleg Glan Hafren at the time—and we used to have a lot of vocational courses for young people who were not academic and may have had undiagnosed learning difficulties and learning disabilities at that time. And that vocational training, between the ages of 14 to 16, were a lifeline to a lot of young people moving into employment. That stopped, which I don't think was a good route for education to go down. It brought schools and colleges together and also the world of work for young people, with the assumption that they would go on to apprenticeships afterwards. Now, I'm talking 35 years ago when I say about that, but for a lot of people who we've worked with, they learn about work in the working environment, and that's key, because a lot of people don't have a role model. And we need to bring education and employers closer together. I've said this in the economic advisory group, and so on: employers need to influence what training needs to go on in colleges, but I also think that that closer working relationship between colleges, FE, schools, whatever we want to say, with and for disabled people in terms of working with that employer and gaining that experience before education ends would be fundamentally changing in terms of disability.

And Arthur.

Well, my view, and Agoriad's view as well, is that young people with disabilities don't sit outside of the economic system when they become older and it shouldn't be allowed to happen. The potential is there to be realised, and the work and employment for them should be actively encouraged and the necessary systems put in place to make sure that they do get the chance to sample it and to realise the value of what work can bring to their lives. 

I think that's quite a valuable point there, because I know that, in one of the previous evidence sessions we had, the gentleman there said that he has spoken with so many disabled young people and nearly all of them have said, 'I was never asked what I wanted to do after school.' Is that something that you see as well?

Well, I always remember a horror story, whereby the children in a school, which will remain nameless, all had placements to go out, bar a young disabled girl, because it was too much trouble to get her one, and she's the only one left in school of her year, and everybody else is out. There's something wrong there.

That's so upsetting to hear, actually. I suppose that brings us on to the next question, really. Again, we're hearing that in terms of work placements, voluntary jobs, supported internships, there just isn't anything out there. Is that something you recognise? And also—what's the word I'm looking for—it's all sort of the same, if that makes sense, like the hospitality sector, it's the same sort of sector, if it is available, or as we've heard about, it's to volunteer in a charity shop, and we've heard then, 'Well, if they can volunteer in a charity shop, they can get paid employment in a shop.' I just wanted to get your views on that then.

So, for us, we always feel that work experience is incredibly valuable for that individual. If you don't have a role model in your family or if you've never sampled something for yourself, how do you decide what you want to do as a career? So, we always start with work experience. Probably, as much as our vocational profiling assessment tool, we get to know that person once we're in a workplace with them, whether that's unpaid work experience or volunteering. And it helps that person decide for themselves. There has to be a level of self-determinism for the young disabled person, or an older person who’s had no experience of work whatsoever, to decide and be participative in the choice of career that they wish to follow, and that's important.

Sometimes we'll do up to the internships, an example of where people will have three rotations. Supported shared apprenticeships can allow for people having three experiences with different employers, and that shouldn't be an end in itself. Our social enterprises and the example of that, the expectation is that people will move into paid employment, whether that's in our social enterprises themselves or whether we’re then moving people into our communities as they progress their skills and become more independent. We should not just accept for a young person because they're regarded as disabled that they don't have an ability to move on to paid employment.

In terms of whether there are opportunities out there, yes, there are a lot of employers out there who are recruiting. There are a lot of employers who can't find staff in terms of their needs as well, but we need to support those employers to make these opportunities happen and happen appropriately for that young person, but also for the employer and their team of staff as well, so that they understand how they should be supporting an individual. We don't want employers who are patronising to someone; likewise, we don't want to assume that because someone functions in a particular way that when they're next learning a task or anything new in the workplace that they can just get on with it themselves. We've got relationships with employers where people have been employed for 30 years now, and we still go back if there's a retraining need or whatever. I know I'm going a little off-tangent here, but the expectation should always be about paid employment for someone.

Okay, brilliant, thank you. Arthur, I don't know if you want to come in.

Just to say that I think it's quite important to establish whether employment is a realistic aim, and there are plenty of assessment tools and vocational profiling and stuff, but it's also getting—. Sometimes there can be a lot of external factors and influences upon the individual, especially from family, and sometimes the impact of family influences and culture can really either promote or destroy somebody's employment aspirations. But I think just to see people, disabled people, in terms of charity shops or food, filth and flowers opportunities, that isn't right.

And what I would say on that is there is a great lesson to be learned in Ysbyty Gwynedd that, during COVID, the interns there worked on the wards all through COVID, and that's something that the trumpet is not blown loudly enough about, because they were on the front line. Their attendance was good, they were treated as part of society, the necessary health and safety measures were in place, but they actually worked, and that just gives you an indication that if disabled people can function in an employment role in that kind of environment, surely to God there's a lot more that they can do.

Okay, brilliant. Thank you.

Thanks very much. Just finally from me, I wondered if you could tell us what measures are in place to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of the services you provide and whether there are any data gaps that would help you target your services even more effectively. Arthur, do you want to go first, and then I'll come to Andrea, or Andrea, you were ready to—?

We have contract-specific criteria that we need to fulfil in order to fulfil the contract, obviously, but there are certain things, for example, Andrea mentioned earlier on Jobs Growth Wales—. It's an absolute mystery to me where the cohort is, because last year we had two referrals, and that's through the whole of north Wales, and I think this year we've got three so far. So, there's a lot more data that we should maybe know where to look for, or should be provided to us, so that we can make sure our context and understanding of disability and employment are relevant.

Okay, so, certainly joining up the dots there. But is there data you can send us about how many people you serve—

Yes, certainly. We can send you that and the note I've made. We can do that. Just let me know who to send it to, and we will do.

And will that tell us the outcomes in terms of people not just getting into work, but also staying in work and progressing?

Certainly, like Andrea, we've got people that have been employed 20 plus years, they've raised families of their own now, so we can send you that kind of thing. We can send case studies. If somebody comes back to me with what you want, we'll send it.

Excellent. We'll be in touch. Andrea.

The same for ourselves. A lot of the work that we do is contract based as well, whether that's a service level agreement that we have with the local authority, or a DWP programme that we operate and our supported internships and so on. Sometimes, we create our own targets against things. Our relationship with Learning Disability Wales and Engage to Change, we base that in terms of what we had as our own expectations, both Agoriad and ELITE, and you see the outcomes from that in the various evaluations that were produced. It's above the national average for mainstream programmes, the number of people that we were getting into employment.

What we do is we also have our own 13-week tracking period—it's very similar to a DWP programme and some of the Welsh Government employment programmes—to see about sustainability. Unfortunately, beyond that, our resources don't allow us to keep tracking individuals. What we do have is a very informal basis, where we say to every jobseeker we work with, once they become independent, 'We're at the end of the phone for you. We'll monitor you once or twice a year, but if there are any issues in between, contact us.' That was the case for us during COVID. We saved about 200 jobs by simply working with employers in terms of furlough at that point, rather than people being made redundant. It is important that people feel comfortable that they've got an organisation that they can go back to in terms of sustainability, and we try, if we can, to keep figures on that.

What we also try to do, and we're working at the moment on the lottery's Green Careers, we've got through to the second stage on that—. One of the things that we also want to keep data on is the people who do not meet our eligibility criteria for the funding, and that's really important for us to identify people who are falling through a gap where the funding simply isn't there for them, so that we can identify what's needed in Wales to support those individuals to achieve their goals of paid employment.

Sorry, what sort of people would fall through the gap?

It may be that they're too old. So, for instance, if I gave Green Careers as an example, they may not live in the area, they may be over 30 years old. When we ran our JobSense programme for people with sight loss and hearing loss, our first programme was in east Wales, and we had lots of people from west Wales and the Valleys who contacted us, and that's why we went for another direct contract with the Welsh European Funding Office, so that we could meet the needs of other people in Wales in relation to that.

Okay. I understand geographically specific targeting, but to disqualify anybody over a certain age when—I think it's some extraordinarily large sum—83 per cent of disabilities are acquired whilst people are in employment.

Yes, and it's simply because the funding that we receive stops at that point. So, for instance, Jobs Growth Wales+ stops at 19 in terms of Welsh Government programmes. We have a lot of people from 20 upwards who would really, really benefit from Jobs Growth Wales+, for instance. So, that's one example there. For other people, it may be that their disability simply isn't covered by a particular programme, so that in-work support that covers mental health and musculoskeletal, if you've got a learning disability, you're not going to be supported by that particular programme. There are your eligibility criteria that are stopping someone getting a service.

Thank you. What contact have you had with the disability disparity evidence unit, because obviously—

I've had no contact with them whatsoever.

Arthur.

No. None.

Okay. Right. Well, thank you very much indeed for your contributions. We'll be in touch with a little bit of additional information, without trying to make it burdensome, as I appreciate that you're both small organisations. But it's been very useful to hear from you as grass-roots organisations that are delivering for people with disabilities. So, thank you very much. We'll be sending you a transcript, anyway, of your evidence, and you can correct it if we've got it wrong.

Diolch. Thank you.

Thank you for the opportunity. Bye-bye.

Thanks. Bye-bye.

We've got one paper to note, which is correspondence from Dr Robert Jones about prisons and sentencing in Wales. Can we agree to note that report?

And I now ask, if Members are content, that we move to exclude the public from the remainder of this meeting. Thank you very much.