Bethan Jenkins AC/AM South Wales West

Bethan at the launch of the Pontrhydyfen scheme

PONTRHYDYFEN residents are one of the first across Wales to access learndirect courses in order to increase their skills for the 21^st Century in their local Communities First centre.

This new scheme has been developed in partnership with Communities First Pelenna, Neath Port Talbot College and Wales’ largest e-learning provider, learndirect.  The scheme was officially launched by Bethan Jenkins AM and will now offer adults of all ages the ability to get online and reap the benefits of the internet.

Andrew Jones, Neath Port Talbot College’s learndirect manager said: “learndirect’s flexible bite sized courses are ideal for more mature individuals who want to gain more IT skills but do not have the confidence or time to go to formal classes.  We’re reaching out in the community to break down the barriers to learning.  We are already in a number of libraries across Neath Port Talbot and hopefully soon we will be in a number of Community First Centres.”

AM Bethan Jenkins said that IT skills are essential for all ages and vital for employability and social inclusion: “Local partnerships such as these are the only way that we are going to engage with residents and break down the barriers to lifelong learning.  Community venues have a very important part to play in ensuring that our older citizens are included in technology and that our working population are able to access skills and training to improve their employability.”

Lenard Trott is a retired doctor who is now gaining essential IT skills for the 21^st Century in the same building that was formerly his doctor’s surgery. “I retired 15 years ago and didn’t need to utilise technology during my working life.  I now have the time to discover the benefits and when you live in a small village like Pontrhydyfen, the internet allows you to feel less isolated, especially as you get older. I now search for trains, buy train tickets and email my family regularly”, says Dr Trott.

Pelenna’s Communities Development Officer Sarah Maggs said: “We have a responsibility to support the local community and ensure that our residents are able to access the services that they need.  Skills and training is just one area and we are delighted to be able to offer on-site learning facilities in an area that has until now been deprived of learning opportunities. Residents of all ages can now come in to learn all about computers and the internet”.

The Neath Port Talbot College-led partnership is being piloted within Pontrydyfen and will soon expand to Tonmawr which is also part of Communities First Pelenna.

If you want to learn new skills in maths, English and IT, or just brush up on the skills you already have, then come into the centre based at Pontrhydyfen Community Centre.   Drop in sessions with a designated tutor are held every Wednesday from 1pm-3pm.   Please join us today and start gaining skills for the 21^st Century. 

For more information about learndirect skills and qualifications visit www.learndirect.co.uk or freephone 0800 101 901.

Bethan speaking with exhibitors at the event

BETHAN Jenkins met experts from Welsh universities at the National Assembly’s Senedd building last week, to find out how universities in Wales are leading the way in working with the public.

The Higher Education and the Welsh Public exhibition, organised by the Beacon for Wales, highlighted the many ways in which Welsh universities bring their knowledge to the wider world.  Every university in Wales was represented at the event.

Speaking about the event, Bethan said: “It was really exciting to meet the experts and find out how local universities interacts with the public.  Although we all appreciate that universities do vital work in teaching and advancing our knowledge of important areas such as medicine, I was really surprised to find that they are also at work behind the scenes helping local communities with their own specific problems.

“The academics that I met were part of a new generation that recognises that the knowledge they hold can benefit the whole of society, whether that means supporting small businesses, charities, and community groups or even informing government policies.”

Bruce Etherington, Beacon for Wales Manager said: “This event provided the chance to show local politicians and opinion-leaders how we contribute to all areas of Welsh society, but just as importantly, we’ve had a chance to meet members of the public, school children and tourists on their visits to the Senedd, and share ideas with colleagues from every university in Wales.”

Beacon for Wales works across the country, helping universities work with, learn from and share knowledge with the public. It is a partnership between Cardiff University, University of Glamorgan, BBC Wales, Amgueddfa Cymru and Techniquest funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales, Research Councils UK and the Wellcome Trust who are providing over £1.2 million from 2008-2011.  As part of its work, the Beacon for Wales has awarded funds (£210k) for 16 public engagement partnership projects across Wales.  

For more information, visit www.engagingwales.org .

Visteon pensioners protesting outside the Assembly in January

INDUSTRIAL disputes often have a habit of tipping over into tragedy. Many people in Wales will remember the death of David Wilkie, the Treforest taxi driver killed near Rhymney when a piece of concrete was dropped on his car while it was carrying strike breaker David Williams to work during the 1984 mining dispute.

Now, the 3,500 former Visteon workers – including 700 from Swansea - fighting to have their pensions restored following the collapse of the car parts maker last year, are claiming that the near-year-long battle has claimed its first victim. Colin Nicholls, who worked at the company’s Basildon site, passed away on February 14 following an illness that his wife Janet says was not helped by the uncertainty over entitlements, which could result in staff that worked for up to 40 years for Ford – and then Visteon, when it was spun out of the auto-maker in 2000 – losing as much as half of what they were expecting to receive.

Now those pensioners are waiting for their union Unite to begin legal action against Ford after last-ditch talks in New York, where officials asked executives once again to make good on promises over pensions that staff believed were given when the spin-out occurred. After Visteon went bust on March 31 last year, its administrators applied to enter the Pension Protection Fund. The PPF, you may remember, was set up in the wake of the collapse of Allied Steel and Wire in 2002 (its pensioners, coincidentally, are still fighting for a full honouring of their entitlements).

Mrs Nicholls left this now-particularly poignant message on the Visteon Pension Action Group website in January: “I am writing this on behalf of my husband Colin Nicholls. He would not have changed over to Visteon if Ford had not said that they would support you all with your pensions. At the moment my husband is ill and cannot attend any of the meetings. If I was not at work myself I would be there for him as my father and brother worked for Fords for many years until they retired…. I am sure that this trouble with the loss of pensions has not helped my husband. What we are losing each month is a considerable amount but not as much as some but still a lot to worry about. I blame Ford for the way my husband has gone down and I will support you as much as I can even if my husband cannot. Good luck to you all.”

To add insult to injury, Mrs Nicholls says she was telephoned on the day of her husband’s funeral by Visteon’s administrators. She had already learned she was no longer entitled to the death benefit normally paid to Ford and Visteon workers because the Visteon UK pension fund had entered the PPF assessment process. She has told VPAG: “(I was) phoned that same day saying that I have got to pay back £720.00. I don’t know what this is for so am still waiting for their letter. The man who phoned knew the funeral was on that day. It was annoying but I kept my cool and will wait to see what they have to say.”

Visteon pensioners have been told that they must repay a cap of 10% to 50% (the amount levied on their pensions when they enter the PPF proper, which should have been administered on their pension payments between March and November 2009). Although this money was asked to be repaid over six months, the large sums involved will virtually wipe out a number of pensioners’ monthly payments. But while VPAG has succeeded in negotiating longer periods of repayments with the pension fund administrators, Mrs Nicholls has been told to repay the outstanding amount immediately because her husband has died. Beyond that, she will only be left with half of what the PPF agrees to give her.

Apart from the legal action, there are signs that the pensions regulator is getting tougher over ‘dumped funds’. But at present, the PPF still provides the most likely outcome for most Visteon pensioners, and it is prevented by the rules under which it was brought into being from paying in full the entitlements of those that have entered the fund. In the meantime, the Swansea pensioners will be marching to a rally at Westminster to mark the first anniversary of Visteon going to the wall. It may have been a year, but this battle is far from over, and these men and women deserve our support.

- This piece can also be seen on WalesHome.org

Bethan speaking at the IWD event organised by Chwarae Teg

On International Women’s Day (March 8), Bethan Jenkins was invited to speak at a specially-convened Chwarae Teg conference about what and who had inspired her. This is what she said:

It is still vitally important to mark International Women’s Day – to celebrate the role women play in society, but also to raise awareness of issues such as equal pay and women’s rights issues that are still as relevant today as they were 50 years ago.

When I sat down to consider this speech, I found it difficult to understand why I had been asked to take part in this event. I think this is much to do with the lack of confidence that many women experience, and our inability to push ourselves out there for personal recognition and praise.

Where I always start is from the point of how I can advance a certain agenda or campaign, how I can influence key decision makers to make people’s lives better. This may be idealistic, and often this is seen as a negative thing, but I don’t think age or sex should make us any less idealistic. Being idealistic is not naive.

If by being a politician I can help others to the best of my ability, if my title assists in that process, then so be it. But I don’t relax of an evening congratulating myself that, for example, I may have helped lobby the council to find a new home for a mother and her children as her previous flat was cold and inaccessible for her young children, or that I have helped raise awareness of eating disorders at the National Assembly, and hounded the Health Minster enough to implement a much needed national strategy in Wales, or encouraged some new young members to join Plaid Cymru.

I see it as something that I would expect anyone to do, and I’m merely a part of the jigsaw in encouraging others to find their voices, and to find the get-up-and-go they probably always had inside themselves, so that they too can go out there and inspire others.

The crux of what I am saying is that some people may find others inspiring, some may view them as the opposite, but it’s how our actions and work reflects the aspirations of inspiration, drive and get-up-and-go that is all important.

It may be no surprise to some when I say I have always been political. When people say that I am young to be in politics, my response is that it is all relative. I was out on the streets of South Wales at anti-apartheid demonstrations from the age of six. I was handing out leaflets asking people to boycott South African goods every cold Saturday in Merthyr Tydfil town square. I went to see Desmond Tutu speak at a packed-out church in the town. All of these early experiences, I am convinced, seeped in to me so that as an adult, I felt a duty to campaign against injustice and inequality when I saw it.

At that time, I was evidently inspired by the courageous Nelson Mandela as I chomped at a birthday cake outside Merthyr library to celebrate his birthday while he was still in prison in South Africa. But, looking back, I was inspired by my parents who took us everywhere, on rallies and demonstrations, who did not shy away from showing us the harsh realities of how people were treated elsewhere in the world. I was inspired by other campaigners who devoted their lives – and still do – to Internationalist causes, who turned out to campaign in wind and rain. I don’t remember the Miner’s Strike, but I can see the sentiment and spirit of South Walian peoples, caring for others they have never met, in the same way as the rallied to support one another when times were tough and mines closing down around them.

I have to be honest and say that as a teenager, the political fervour did not catch on as much as earlier in my youth. My inspiration for that time was dominated by music, literature and drama – though I can remember when we did a play about the anti apartheid movement, I was the only one who knew the hymn Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika.

My English teacher in school, the ever-eccentric Jennifer Evans, was my inspiration throughout school, nurturing us as her prodigies to take on the world. A strong feminist, our A level studies were dominated by the likes of Alice Walker, The Wife of Bath, and a never ending discussion on the love affair between Cathy and Heathcliff.

I was definitely inspired by music, whether that was going to rock gigs, or playing classical music in an orchestra, or when I eventually set up a folk- pop band in university where discovering playing ad lib viola was the greatest inspiration of all – losing oneself in the music, and nobody dictating which notes you should play, or when you should stop.

I was inspired, and still am, by female singer songwriters – far more so, I’m afraid, than by male artists – like Joni Mitchell, Nina Simone, Eleanor McEvoy, Ashely Maher, Thea Gilmore, and the authors Alice Walker, Margaret Atwood, Jaqueline Wilson, Gillian Clarke, the Brontes, to political writers and activists like Mary Wollstonecraft, Simone Weil, the Greenham Common Women – the list is endless.

Nonetheless, when I went to university in Aberystwyth, my political edge returned. I don’t think I could have ignored it even if I wanted to. I became involved in student politics, and was Women’s Officer, then President, of the Students Union, inspired by lecturers such as Richard Wyn Jones to put my political studies into action. It frustrated me that so many people who studied politics did nothing political outside the lecture theatre.

As well as campaigning on issues like top-up fees and Welsh language rights, I was inspired to get involved in the peace movement in Aberystwyth with the onset of the Iraq War. The movement was like one big family and, like my childhood, I was inspired by how the community came together in its activism, young and old working together. It was not an event that I could merely watch  on the television screens without a care in the world. I took part in demonstrations, organized peace festivals and so forth.

It angered me, it created and formed the passion I had for changing things, and to try and make a small difference in the world. The war continued, as we know. But, during that time, Adam Price set up the campaign to impeach Tony Blair, and opened up the door to party politics, something which I had always shunned before as I did not want to be put in any box, or confine my political thinking to one agenda only.

I was probably always a Nationalist, but I had never really been introduced to Plaid Cymru on any formal footing before going to Aberystwyth. There, I was inspired by young politician Leanne Wood and Dafydd Iwan who came to Aberystwyth on an Independence discussion tour of Wales. After that, I was hooked, and set up a new youth movement for Plaid called Cymru X.

I don’t think I was inspired to stand for election as an AM by any one human being, or music track, or book. I had a bad car crash in 2005, and realised that if I wanted to change things for the better, or play just a small role in political life here in Wales, then I didn’t have all the time in the world as I had once imagined. Life is short, and precious at that.

I think that all of my experience up until the point where I sought election as an AM gave me the inner confidence to push on and put my name forward. It was truly not because I wanted a title, or more money, or the kudos, that I wanted to become an AM. I saw it as an extension of my campaigning, as a way to get other people involved in progressing Wales. Labour had done very little to inspire me in to politics in the south Wales Valleys where I had grown up, so I was intent on offering other people, especially those of my age, and alternative vision.

I am still working on this now, and hope that this national movement to change Wales is inspiring more people in to politics- whether that is at a grass roots level, a national level, or European. The challenge is to get to those people who are losing faith, who see no point in voting, to encourage them to believe in themselves as opposed to relying on others to work hard at it for them. Directing responsibility on others should not be part of the Welsh psyche.

So my main point is that there are inspirational people and movements, and groups all around us. It’s how we pull them all together that matters, and how we try and take the labels away from people. I don’t want to be labelled as a young female AM doing good all on my own. I’m only here because others have inspired me, that I’ve had the passion filtered down to me by my family, from learning from my Irish heritage and the world around me.

Let’s not forget that there’s people out there waiting to be inspired by the very people in this room, so I urge you all to go back to your communities and put that in to action.

BETHAN Jenkins AM has joined Plaid councillors on Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council in condemning the Labour-led authority’s decision to push ahead with up to 750 job losses there.

Plaid group leader Del Morgan had asked for an amendment calling for more concrete commitments to no compulsory redundancies. However, the council leader claimed that the authority “is not an employment agency”, and Plaid’s councillors were defeated, paving the way for cuts of over £6m in the next financial year.

Bethan said: “Plaid councillors went on to vote against this budget, and who can blame them? Why should council staff and the public that receive these services suffer because of this top-down solution to a Government’s failed economic strategy? It is not their fault, and the Plaid councillors think so, too. They went on to vote against this unacceptable budget.”

Alun Llewelyn, deputy leader of the group, said: “As a group we always take a constructive approach to the budget process and we are fully aware of the financial situation. Nevertheless, with 10,000 council jobs expected to be lost across Wales, why is Neath Port Talbot taking such a large proportion of them? It calls into question the past leadership of the authority – and its future direction as it looks to increased outsourcing or even privatisation of services.”

Linet Purcell, another Plaid councillor, added: “Neath Port Talbot is still likely to have one of the highest Council Tax rates in Wales with an increase of 3.8% predicted for this year. So, more money for less services. I think people in the borough will make up their own minds over the competence of this Labour-run authority when they are presented with this reality.”

Bethan concluded: “We have long-standing issues of hardship and exclusion that need addressing in Neath Port Talbot, and this is the very time when the local authority should be increasing its support for people here, not slashing services. These cuts are nothing short of a scandal.”

Bethan marches with Plaid councillors Alun Llewelyn (also the party's parliamentary candidate for Neath), Linet Purcell, and behind Bethan, Rosalyn Davies at the recent Port Talbot demonstration

BETHAN Jenkins AM has urged people living in Neath Port Talbot who care about care home reorganisation to get involved in the consultation over the plans, after she raised the matter with the First Minister of Wales.

The South Wales West AM sought Welsh Government reassurances over the controversial proposals from the Senedd in Cardiff Bay after speaking with many worried constituents on the matter, attending demonstrations like the one in Port Talbot on February 20, and speaking at public gatherings like the March 3 meeting over Trem y Glyn care home in Glynneath.

Bethan told the First Minister: “You may be aware that Neath Port Talbot council is proposing closing its existing seven care homes and replacing them with three new super homes. There is considerable consternation in the borough over this, not least because it will necessitate the moving of elderly residents from previously-thought secure environments to new surroundings, possibly away from their own communities.

“There is also concern over how relatives will access them. Are there any guidelines or standards issued on the movement of elderly residents and access to them?”

Mr Jones said the plans were a matter for the local authority but that care provision would be scrutinised by the social services inspectorate. He added: “I would urge anyone with a strong interest in this issue to get involved.”

However, local Aberafon AM Brian Gibbons spoke in favour of the council’s plans, claiming that standards would be improved and that he “didn’t understand” why such questions were being raised in the Siambr.

Bethan said afterwards: “It is somewhat hypocritical of Dr Gibbons to attend the Unison rally just over a week ago and give workers every impression that he is with them, and then defend his Labour allies when he is some 30-odd miles away and where he thinks that no one is listening.

“I would urge local people to become involved. More and more people are becoming concerned over the proposals – as I saw in Glynneath last night – and opposition is becoming more organised.

“I’d also like to correct the First Minister on one thing. He said the care home plan had received “across the board” support from councillors when they heard it before Christmas. This is wrong. Plaid Cymru councillors were against it then and remain vehemently opposed to it now. Plaid councillors they put people, staff and services first.”

BETHAN Jenkins AM has been told that there are no plans to downgrade services at Neath Port Talbot Hospital.

The South Wales West Plaid Cymru AM met with David Sissling, chief executive of Abertawe Bro Morgannwg University NHS Trust, following concerns over the future of the pre-discharge ward.

Mr Sissling pledged that the seven-year-old hospital at Baglan was very much a part of an ongoing reorganisation that would put its four hospitals at the hub of its services.

Bethan said: “The chief executive was good enough to admit that the Trust’s plans to move more services closer the community had not been handled well and had contributed to a feeling of unease among staff at the hospital.

“But he emphasised what a fantastic facility the hospital provided for the Trust, and that it made no sense – service provision-wise or financially – to discontinue its use in any meaningful way. He also promised that he and his staff will take greater care to consult with staff and patients before and during changes.”

Bethan has also raised the issue with Edwina Hart AM. The health minister said she is planning to meet with the chairs of all the local health boards in Wales, and will update AMs afterwards.

Mr Sissling has invited Bethan and fellow Plaid AM Dai Lloyd back to discuss further the Trust’s ongoing programme of reorganisation this month.

BETHAN Jenkins AM has warned Disability Living Allowance claimants to be on their guard after a Welsh charity told her of a benefits advice service offering ‘free’ advice that actually ended up costing thousands of pounds.

Cymorth Cymru, the housing support organization, said it had visited a service user this week who had told its staff that the company they contacted after hearing of its offer had visited and completed DLA forms, including benefit and carers’ allowance applications on their behalf of the client.

Bethan said: “The company works on the basis that it receives 45% of any back pay that the client receives from the Department of Work and Pensions. Instead, the service user ended up paying £1,500 to the company.”

The company has no official address, just a PO box in Preston and a website, www.benefitanswers.co.uk. Bethan raised the matter in the Senedd with Jane Hutt, the Business Secretary, who said she was alarmed to hear of what she described as fraudulent behaviour, and pledged to raise it with both the social justice minister and the UK Government.

Bethan added: “This company appears to be after clients already going through the benefits appeals procedure, who would be most likely to receive considerable back pay. If it looks too good to be true, it usually is. I would warn claimants to be very much on their guard if they are approached in this way.”