HENRY’S NEWSWATCH—NOVEMBER 2010
Disability Wales Annual Conference
21 October 2010
Glyndwr University Wrexham
Keynote Address—Novel Approach in Three Short Volumes Gains Wide Readership
Henry Langen’s speech about the initiatives undertaken by the Pembrokeshire Access Group took place on 21 October this year as part of a keynote address to the Disability Wales Annual Conference at Glyndwr University, Wrexham.
He identifies three seminal projects as illustration of what he describes as helping shape the process of change with sense and sensibility. Transcript of speech in full offered up as Henry’s Newswatch for November.
Hello everyone, my name is Henry Langen, I am a director of Disability Wales; and I come from Narberth in Pembrokeshire.
I am also chair of the Pembrokeshire Access Group.
I would like to dedicate my speech this afternoon to my friend and colleague Martin Goodall the Vice Chair of Pembrokeshire Access Group, who passed away suddenly yesterday morning.
I have been asked to speak to you this afternoon, about some of the initiatives we at the Pembrokeshire Access Group have been involved in. Some of the many projects we have completed over the years, I have chosen three which I think give an example of the broad range of issues which access groups can and should be involved in; in order to influence change.
The first one was launched in July of this year:
A 15-YEAR restoration project at the Bishops Palace at St David’s; carried out by Cadw; it was one out of sixteen in Europe and three in the U.K, to receive an award from Nostra, the Pan-European Federation of Cultural Heritage.
Our AM heritage minister, Alun Ffred Jones, accepted the award at the Palace from Europa Nostra representative Winford Evans; I attended on behalf of Pembrokeshire Access Group.
We have been involved with this project from the beginning, the Access group carrying out an access audit, and our County Council Access Officer worked along side Cadw advising them all the way.
This ancient monument now has full accessibility for everyone, and is an example of what can be achieved through co-operation and innovative thinking.
The second is our beach wheel chair project that our Access Officer Alan Hunt had seen in the South of England and a facility I had witnessed and tried out in France while on holiday in 2006.
We put the idea of buying two of the chairs to Pembrokeshire Access Group as a pilot scheme to enable disabled people to access the beaches of Pembrokeshire.
The group agreed to go ahead with the project and Pembrokeshire County Council agreed to reimburse our preliminary funding.
We sourced the chairs in the United States, and imported them into the U.K. through Brecon Coach Works at a cost of £2,000 each.
The first two are housed and managed at the Tourist Information Centre at Saundersfoot, where they have proved a resounding success and are extensively used by visitors and local people. Local schools also use them for field trips, farmyard trips and visits to the beach.
Due to their success the National Park Authority liked the idea and bought six more to enable access to even more beaches; particularly in the north of our county; housing two of them with PIPPA (Physically Impaired People of Pembrokeshire Association) the voluntary run wheelchair and disabled equipment hire organisation, in Haverfordwest.
Two more children’s beach chairs where subsequently funded by the Lions and these are now in use at St Dogmels.
The use of these chairs is virtually free with a small returnable deposit being required together with a fee of £3.00 per session. A session can be anything from half an hour to a full day – the fee is the same and is there just to cover maintenance of the chairs.
In September this year two new children’s beach chairs were added to the fleet at the Tourist Information Centre at Saundersfoot harbour.
These two chairs, were donated by Welsh Children’s Charity POPSY (Parents of Partially Sighted & Blind Youngsters) with funding from the Lady Taverners Wales Region.
They have been designed and manufactured locally by NGA Engineering, based in Steynton, Pembrokeshire, and have been designed to meet the child’s needs and comfort; remarkably they are half the cost of the imported ones.
Thirdly our latest project brought to the Access Group by our Access officer Alan Hunt;
The Pembrokeshire Passport.
We launched the passport this year in June.
The Pembrokeshire Passport, a joint initiative between the Pembrokeshire Access Group and Pembrokeshire County Council, is a bright orange wallet with plastic pockets that disabled people can put information in to help make using the bus and train easier and give people more independence.
The passport, which has received initial funding from Health Challenge Pembrokeshire, can be used anytime day or night and at weekends and will tell bus drivers and rail staff what help a person may need on a journey; aiding communication and holding important information about the support that might be needed if a person has a problem on their journey.
The Passport can be used on any bus in Pembrokeshire and on Arriva Wales’s trains and stations. Taxi drivers will also know about the wallet.
Anyone can have a Pembrokeshire Passport, but the people it will help the most are those who get very nervous, people who need assistance, people who find it hard to communicate, people who don’t speak English as a first language and people with conditions and behaviors that the driver might not understand if something happens.
The wallet has plastic pockets that you can put words, pictures, or cards in to show where you want to travel or the help you might need.
The Passport is also a sort of disability awareness training by the back door because it empowers the bus drivers and rail staff; alerting them to the fact that a person will need assistance even before they board the bus or train; and importantly the staff will know that the assistance required by the disabled person will be described in the Passport wallet.
The passport does not give free or discounted travel on the buses or trains.
WAG is interested in exploring the broader potential of the passport. Particularly in respect of helping students with learning difficulties to feel more confident when using public transport.
These three achievements highlight the important voluntary work Access Groups do in Wales, sadly they are in decline due to lack of funding.
Also in decline are Access Officers employed by County Councils in Wales, they have decreased greatly in the last couple of years, and I think there are now only three left in the whole of Wales, yet; in England the trend is in reverse they are increasing. Access officers are a vital link between local access groups and local authorities and are highly trained to be able to advise on the DDA and inclusive environments. Without them most authorities struggle to understand the real issues and problems which many disabled people face every day. I think that the decline and failure of many access groups and the exclusion, lack of independence and frustration, which we experience on a daily basis, is, in no small measure due to the failure of authorities in Wales to employ an access officer.
So I leave you with that thought; thank you very much.
Response from Vin West Arfon Access Group to the conference:-
“The number of Access Officers in Wales has drastically declined to the point where we now have only 3 out of 22 local authorities. One of those three is the Access Officer for Pembrokeshire Alan Hunt who is not only one of the most knowledgeable Access Officers in the UK but personally very committed to Inclusive Design and Equal Access. If we could have 22 Alan’s then Wales would be a very different place indeed for disabled people.”
