Diolch, Llywydd. Strength-based development is about helping people and communities identify the strengths they already have in order to tackle the root problems preventing them from reaching their potential. Applying this approach, the co-pro revolutionaries in the Co-production Network for Wales are adopting international best practice, working for an approach that enables people and professionals to share power and work together in equal relationships to make public services more effective and relevant. This is about unlocking community strengths to build stronger communities for the future.

Regrettably, however, the Labour Welsh Government has proved averse to implementing the Localism Act 2011’s community rights agenda, which would help community engagement and deliver services more efficiently and effectively. Overall, there’s been a top-down approach towards community engagement in Wales, with resources and guidance to local authorities being generated from central Government. Moreover, the Welsh Government has published a centralised document, ‘Principles for working with communities’, which includes the involvement of communities, service users and organisations in defining community problems and the design and delivery of new approaches, but no grass-roots powers for communities.

Although there are some powers of local intervention in Wales, local authorities are not currently obliged to undertake community asset transfers nor are there registers to show which local authority assets are under threat, unlike across the border. Furthermore, the results of the Welsh Government’s consultation on protecting community assets in 2015 showed 78 per cent of respondents welcoming a power to initiate a transfer of assets from public sector bodies, essentially supporting the community right to bid missing in Wales.

The Welsh Government has given funding for a pilot scheme to the Gwent Association of Voluntary Organisations for a community asset transfer officer—good—helping groups in Gwent bid for community assets—fantastic—but it isn’t yet clear if it has been a success. The Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government said in November 2016 that the Cabinet Secretary for Communities and Children had been participating in talks with the Campaign for Real Ale regarding the future of Welsh pubs. That sounds very interesting; I think I’d have enjoyed those talks too. However, we’re yet to see the results of these talks. Last year, Flintshire Local Voluntary Council told me that Welsh Government cuts to local voluntary councils would devastate their ability to support more user-led, preventative and cost-effective services. In other words, by spending money smarter, we could safeguard those services by working differently. And the Wales Council for Voluntary Action said that Welsh Government and the sector need to refresh current engagement mechanisms, develop, promote and monitor a programme for action based on co-production and common ground, with local authorities, health boards and the third sector working much more imaginatively to develop better services that are closer to people, more responsive to needs and add value by drawing on community resources.

Oxfam Cymru has specifically called on the Welsh Government to embed the sustainable livelihoods approach in all policy and service delivery in Wales, helping people identify their own strengths in order to tackle root problems preventing them and their communities from reaching their potential.

Five years ago, the current Minister rejected the WCVA’s ‘Communities First—A Way Forward’ report, which found that community involvement in co-designing and co-delivering local services should be central to any successor lead tackling poverty programme. Five years later, and after spending £0.5 billion on it, the same Minister has now said he is phasing out Communities First, having failed to reduce the headline rates of poverty or increase relative prosperity in Wales. As the Bevan Foundation states, if people feel that policies are imposed on them, the policies don’t work, and a new programme should be produced with communities, not directed top down.

Let us look to local area co-ordination in Derby—supporting residents and communities, driving collaboration between local people, families, communities and organisations to build something bigger and more sustainable, building on the very successful model implemented in Australia. An independent evaluation by the University of Derby, working with just 50 people, found savings of £800,000 for the health and social care economy, and that introducing local area co-ordinators had built relationships, established trust, worked to people’s strengths and aspirations and built connections with family members and other citizens to create solutions for those communities. This convinced that local authority and NHS there to invest and expand to all 17 council wards. If only the Welsh Government would listen. They could use funding better, improve lives, and therefore help public services save money. So, my question to all Assembly Members is: will you join the revolution, step up and co-produce the Wales we want?