Welsh Assembly and the lost equality impact assessment

When these organisations are funded by public money - then surely, they should be subject to Equality Impact Assessments.

They should not be, e.g. the Women's Aid.

www.welshwomensaid.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/WWA-Transgender-Policy-and-Procedural-Guidance-INTERNAL.pdf

In accordance with the Equality Act 2010, Welsh Women’s Aid (WWA) aims to create an inclusive community where people are enabled to meet their full potential and are treated as individuals. This includes recognising, supporting and understandinga person’s preferred gender identity.

This is supposed to be Welsh Women's Aid.

Surely, Women's Aid was established to provide aid for women?

Surely how they implement things (whether directly or through purchases services from third party suppliers) does not change their public sector equality duty?

As part of the Transgender Action Plan, Welsh Government also funded Welsh Women's Aid to "issue guidance in 2015-16 to their member organisations on providing accessible services to meet the needs of transgender survivors of domestic abuse and sexual violence; deliver training to domestic abuse services on meeting the needs of transgender survivors of domestic abuse and sexual violence."

Also a charity, so would not be required to do an Equality Impact Assessment.

This is the document produced by Welsh Women's Aid.

www.welshwomensaid.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/WWA-Transgender-Policy-and-Procedural-Guidance-INTERNAL.pdf

Thank you for your reply, FOIrequester. And many thanks for what you're doing.

So, the Welsh Government itself is actually funding groups "not, therefore, included in the list of public bodies required to comply with the PSED* under the Equality Act 2010."

*Public Sector Equality Duty

This stinks.

Worth an email to David TV Davies MP? The one MP who has been engaged and active on the issue right from the start is Welsh, and so in a good position to ask well placed questions.

I asked Welsh Government if an Equality Impact Assessment had been carried out for the 'Trans*form Cymru Toolkit'. This is what they said:

"With regard to the Trans*Form Cymru project which was undertaken by Youth Cymru, the Toolkit was created by a group of trans young people to help organisations and individuals understand the issues which affect them...Youth Cymru is a Company and Registered Charity. It is not, therefore, included in the list of public bodies required to comply with the PSED under the Equality Act 2010. Consequently, they would not be obliged to undertake an Equality Impact Assessment in respect of their policy work."

FOIrequester posted a link on page 3 of this thread to the 'Transform Cymru Toolkit': youthcymru.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/39880-YC-TransForm-Toolkit-English-Final.pdf
"GUIDANCE FOR YOUTH ORGANISATIONS: CREATING AN INCLUSIVE SPACE FOR TRANS YOUNG PEOPLE "

This was funded by the Welsh Government. Dated September 2015.

It's 79 pages long.

The phrase "Equality Impact Assessment" does not appear at all in this 79-page document.

Working my through it, but it is difficult.

#TheDogAteMyEIA

I love it

Great #tag. Well done those women for meeting and pursuing this,

Love #ThedogatemyEIA

That's gonna catch on.

A number of GC women met this evening to agree a plan of action re this appalling dereliction of duty (polite way of putting it) by Welsh Government. Inspired by some of you we also have a hash-tag: #TheDogAteMyEIA
#WelshGovIgnoringWomen
If you are on Twitter / SM please use it and share it.

Those are two brilliant articles and I’m astonished at the fact there doesn’t appear to be any twisting of words or implication of ‘terfness’.

Just done a quick search on my CC website (which is in any case truly woeful) and came up with absolutely nothing containing the word transgender. This is Powys.

Have DM'd you FOIrequester. Would you be up for an interview (trusted journalist)?

Perhaps you're right Michelle - I wondered whether because they had only focussed on the impact on trans people in the EIA they were proposing to carry out and because this isn't how an EIA is supposed to be done, that they could argue that it didn't count as a valid EIA at all (because it wasn't) and therefore doesn't need to be disclosed when someone requests the EIA.

Either way, it still begs the question 'why didn't you do an EIA, and if you did, why can't you produce it?'

Lying to avoid handing something over should be an offense?

The only FOI I have done for my local council (and those others have done to the local council on the same topic) seemed to land on the desk of a junior information admin type who appeared to forward the request to randomly selected individuals who may or may not be in the correct department. If that individual didn’t recognise the request you got a reply from the information bod saying the council didn’t hold that information (even if you knew they did).

The powers that be have seriously underestimated how angry and tenacious women are about this issue.

Interesting, Longines

I thought if the information was held then on a FOI request it had to be shared (with obvious exemptions/bits redacted as needed)? The FOIs I've been (peripherally) involved with, everything was checked and logged and nothing could be 'disappeared' or claimed as lost to conveniently avoid sharing material if it existed.

Obviously it needs to be uncovered either way, but do you not think it's more likely that they did an EIA but focussed solely on how trans people would be affected, given that's what they publicly said they were going to do?

I don't think they're covering up the fact they didn't do the EIA - I think they're covering up the fact they did it wrong.

This is shocking

Bloody, bloody slipshod policy making

Cross posted. I'll look at the other twitter thread as well. Thanks.

Thanks for the link, Oldstyle. Happy for you to DM me. Is this the twitter thread?
twitter.com/RadFemsCardiff/status/1156460162653315073

Here's the main twitter thread FOIrequester - over 200 RTs so it's gone off in all directions:
twitter.com/CResisters/status/1156522554024255488

FOIrequester Bravo Thank you for chasing and exposing this, its another crucial part of the jigsaw.

Tech used to be able to search all emails by key words and time scales and locate every mention of a specific subject. The roles and qualifications of those doing the EQIA would also be interesting to know, especially if it was in house personnel or commissioned from an outside agency.

This is of course presuming that it was done at all.

Asking for Equality Impact Assessments can be a very effective tactic for dealing with this bollocks.

On a micro scale, a youth centre in our city changed the women and men's toilets to 'gender neutral' and 'gender neutral with urinals'. The 'gender neutral (with urinals)' facility was absolutely perfect for predators to exploit- not only were the urinals directly opposite the sinks, but there was a fire exit in there as well. It would have been easy to lie in wait for someone, assault them and escape without detection. A local woman emailed to ask if they'd done any kind of impact assessment and guess what? They hadn't and very sheepishly changed the signs back in short order.