Welsh Government recently launched the Women’s Health Plan and the Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy. In the first of two blogs, Debbie Shaffer, Director at Fair Treatment for the Women of Wales, takes a look at the shared opportunities and risks.
Six months after the launch of Wales’s first-ever NHS Women’s Health Plan, and a couple of months on from publication of Welsh Government’s Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy (2025-2035), it’s time to look at what these have in common and what they might mean for the sector.
Both present a 10-year vision for improving the health and wellbeing of Wales’ population, underpinned by a widely-held ambition to address health inequality.
TACKLING STIGMA AND STEREOTYPES
Perhaps more than any other health-related topics, women’s health and mental health share widespread myths and taboos, so highlighting and tackling the harmful impact of age-old biases, stereotypes and stigma on those affected is fundamental to both plans.
It’s important from the outset to address some lingering misconceptions relating to women’s health, including that it relates only to maternity and gynaecological issues. As important as they undoubtedly are, evidence suggests these areas are under-researched and under-resourced, leading to unequal and poor experiences and outcomes for many women.
However, this lack of investment and research also extends into the female experience of health issues that can affect any one of us, whether that’s diabetes, asthma, cardiac conditions or mental health.
This can result in significant burdens on people, their families, workplaces, and wider society. It isn’t hard to see how wanting to reduce health inequality is echoed in the Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy.
Both plans focus on person-centred care and addressing historic prejudices, ableist assumptions and inaccessible environments. Voluntary organisations will rightly see this as part of their wheelhouse and integral to Wales’s ‘prevention’ agenda. Alongside delivering services ourselves, many voluntary organisations will also be focused on amplifying the voices and needs of beneficiaries and marginalised groups.
INSIGHT AND EXPERTISE
We are uniquely embedded and trusted within our communities, and regardless of size, many organisations will gather a wealth of information during the course of their work. As such, we have many valuable insights and a great deal of expertise to share with statutory bodies that can enable them to develop policy and practices that reduce (rather than perpetuate) inequity, leading to earlier and better interventions for service users.
Coproduction features prominently in both delivery plans. This approach brings together statutory services, the voluntary sector and people with lived experience to collaboratively design and evaluate services. This is very much cause for optimism.
When implementing both plans, public bodies will be expected to scope out the services and support offered to people and the communities in which they live, and create a network of experts to ensure that whatever is devised is accessible and effective.
This is an excellent opportunity for voluntary organisations to get involved, advocate for our beneficiaries, ensure their voices are heard, and help nip inequities in the bud. It’s also an opportunity to demonstrate that the services many of us provide are essential for women’s health, mental health, and wider wellbeing, and should be valued as such.
RISKS
However, being formally signposted by a public body as an organisation providing services could well lead to increased demand. Not all organisations are currently in a position to absorb this additional work without more resources. At its core, coproduction is about ensuring participants are valued and supported so that they’re equitable partners, so statutory bodies will need to factor this in from the start.
More voluntary organisations may need to engage with formal commissioning processes of which they have little knowledge or expertise. To safeguard against smaller and grassroots groups being excluded, statutory partners will need to look at new, innovative ways to ensure those organisations are sustainably equipped to participate.
The often marginalised voices so many of us represent will depend on this, with better experiences and more equitable outcomes for all service-users being a key measure of success for both the Women’s Health Plan and Mental Health Strategy.
FTWW: Fair Treatment for the Women of Wales is a pan-Wales charity and disabled people’s organisation focused on addressing health inequities experienced by women and people assigned female at birth.
MORE RESOURCES
In the second part of this series, Simon Jones, Head of Policy, Campaigns and Communications at Mind Cymru, will delve a little deeper into the Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy.
For more on the health and social care landscape in Wales, visit WCVA’s Health and Care Project page.
The principles by which Welsh Government funds the sector are set out in the Code of practice for funding the third sector.