Ministers of the Council at the sectoral meeting on Social Inclusion, Cardiff, May 2008 - Click to Enlarge

Social Inclusion

Lead Administration – Scotland and Wales

Poverty and social exclusion affect the quality of life of families and communities across all British Irish Council administrations. The Scottish Executive and the Welsh Assembly Government jointly take the lead in advancing work in the social inclusion work sector of the Council.

The current topic of work is child poverty with a focus on lone parents. The work concentrates on the broad benefits to be derived from improving access for lone parents to employment, education and skills, quality childcare and support services.
Work is concentrated on transition points in lone parent’s lives and how they are supported through these, bearing in mind how people move in and out of lone parenthood. A focus is also being maintained on the child across all ages, and in the way wider issues of child poverty are addressed.

Disability and access to employment, education and training was the last topic considered by the group and was discussed at the Ministerial meeting held in Edinburgh in March 2006. [Communiqué] Disabled people are particularly vulnerable to poverty and social exclusion, in part due to their low level of participation in the workforce. The working group examined access to employment for disabled people, influencing public and employer perceptions, institutional factors such as benefits systems, effective pathways and models for supporting sustained employment for disabled people and joint policies and partnerships.

Progress included:

• collation of details of the targeted benefit support and programmes for disabled people across the administrations;
• collation of a range of disability statistics related to employment, education and training;
• a Welsh Assembly Government commissioned Literature Review [Literature Review];
• a series of visits undertaken in Belfast and Jersey to projects aimed at helping disabled people access the workplace, education and training.

The report presented to Ministers provides examples of best practice in a number of important areas: supporting access to employment for people with disabilities; the role of IT in improving employment prospects of disabled people in co-operation with the BIC Knowledge Economy sector; and how disabled people are involved in policy making in employment, education and training.

Financial inclusion was the focus of the group’s first work strand. The report outlined the problems that individuals and communities affected by poverty can have in accessing appropriate financial services. The work strand concluded with a conference for Credit Union professionals, which was held in Wales in February 2005. Report of the Conference (pdf).

Please click here to view the Communiqués issued following each of the meetings on Social Inclusion.