Tories say £400k Welsh language ’empathy’ programme is a colossal waste of money
Martin Shipton
The Welsh Government has been accused of wasting nearly £400,000 on a programme looking at how “unconscious bias” among senior leaders may be inhibiting the growth of the Welsh language.
Contractors are being invited to co-deliver the programme, jointly managed by Academi Wales and the Cymraeg 2050 division of the Welsh Government, which aims to have a million Welsh speakers by the middle of the century. The total value of the initiative is £382,493.
But Shadow Welsh Language Minister Tom Giffard said spending such a sum on a “pet project” of this kind represented a colossal waste of public money.
According to an online advertisement, Leading in a Bilingual Country (LIBC) is “a development programme for senior leaders to create an organisational culture in which the Welsh language can flourish”.
Group dynamics
The advert continues: “We (the Welsh Government) seek to further develop the programme that looks at unconscious bias – understanding how inherent bias in people and organisations can inhibit moving Cymraeg forward and how an understanding of group dynamics and actively seeking diverse views around the topic can address this; and empathy – how leaders explore and protect the opportunity to listen to others’ opinions and experiences of Cymraeg to develop mutual understanding.
“Using effective communication that is based in positive and social psychology – ie more strengths-based, proud, inspiring, and inclusive role of leadership – to create the right conditions to begin making positive changes through small steps and celebrating small wins.
“We are seeking contractors to co-deliver this programme. Contractors must meet the following criteria: background in leadership in Wales public services and familiarity with the principles and values of the One Welsh Public Service; demonstrable experience of delivery of learning and development to diverse groups of senior leaders from public services in relevant areas of leadership development and management of change; a commitment to and experience of working with the principles, values and spirit of Cymraeg 2050.
“The successful contractor would be tasked, in the first instance, with leading two cohorts per year with a ‘train the trainer’ element as an integral part. In subsequent years, when the train the trainer element has developed, we envisage increasing the number of cohorts per year.
“The contractor will also co-facilitate with Prosiect 2050 officials a community of practice/post-programme implementation process to consolidate learning from the programme once leaders have completed it. “The programme will be based on a detailed theory of change and will be iterative, ie it will be refined and adapted based on formal and informal feedback of each cohort as they progress through the programme and as they interact in the community of practice.
“This will be an organic process to ensure LIBC remains fit for purpose and relevant to the current context at the time of delivery. We will therefore be working collaboratively with the successful contractors to co-design, adapt, quality assure and deliver LIBC.
“We will review every session in preparation for subsequent sessions to ensure the learning matches the dynamic of a given cohort. We will also evaluate each cohort based on the findings of the theory of change. This is likely to include, as a minimum, a baseline and end-of-programme cultural survey of the participants’ organisations in relation to Cymraeg.
“An integral part of this new iteration of LIBC will be the ‘train the trainer’ aspect. The aim of this is to upskill suitable public sector staff to deliver LIBC in the future, but also to make them ambassadors for culture change at a decision-making-level for Cymraeg in their organisations. We envisage this turning into a peer network over time.”
The project is aimed at covering the whole of Wales.
‘Off track’
Mr Giffard, a Welsh Conservative MS for South Wales West, said: “The last census very clearly showed that the number of Welsh speakers had decreased under the Welsh Labour Government, who are now seriously off track to meet their target of a million Welsh speakers by 2050.
“But when difficult decisions need to be made across government, spending nearly £400,000 on a programme to look at ‘unconscious bias’ and ’empathy’ around the Welsh language in the public sector is another colossal waste of money from the Welsh Labour Government.
“Taxpayers expect their hard-earned money to be spent on things like our schools and our NHS, not wasted away by a Welsh Labour Government on pet projects which will make little difference to the lives of ordinary people across Wales.”
Widespread support
A Welsh Government spokesperson said: “The Welsh language belongs to us all, wherever we are on our Welsh language journey and there’s widespread support for our aim of a million Welsh speakers and an increase in the daily use of Welsh by 2050.
“Leaders have a key role to help us create the Wales we want by inspiring and encouraging people to use more Cymraeg. The Leading in a Bilingual Country programme brings senior leaders from across Wales together to share experiences and ideas on what works, explore effective communication approaches and how to make positive changes through small steps.”
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I would have to agree, the Welsh Government does have a track record on wasting huge amounts of public money.
Funds get poured down a variety of drains on a regular basis. Politicians in general have lost sight of priorities, indeed they appear frightened of the real challenges and deliberately ignore them.
The science of psychology has yet to prove the existence of ‘the unconscious’, yet our gullible idiot politicians want to throw money at snake-oil vendors who reckon they understand its biases. I’m not remotely surprised but it’s infuriating.
“The science of psychology has yet to prove the existence of ‘the unconscious’”
Do you and ‘Adrian’ ever use the internet to acquire knowledge.
https://royalsociety.org/-/media/policy/publications/2015/unconscious-bias-briefing-2015.pdf
If you did acquire some prior knowledge on what you opine on perhaps it would provide you some protection against becoming so easily infuriated.
Or knickeri intwisticus as it’s also known.
I genuinely find it hilarious what constitutes ‘knowledge’ for you. That links to a woke garbage article referencing all the gender woo woo, and of course the implicit bias test, which measures preference, not bias. Show me the peer-reviewed research paper that proves the existence of the ‘unconscious’…take your time.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/supersurvivors/201707/does-the-unconscious-really-exist
I genuinely find it hilarious that you make category errors and found your arguments upon them. I also find your confirmation bias predictable.
I love how you nervously dance around the core argument…maybe you could point me to that ground-breaking research paper?
Tag team of three.
So Adrian, You and Adria a tag team or one and the same!
What’s hilarious is you think that article is of any use to your argument. I bet you just read the headline and thought “that fits what my favourite right wing grifter told me to believe so I’ll stop”. Pathetic really
Any money used to preserve the Welsh language should come directly from the UK government, they are the ones who’ve tried to cleanse our culture and ethnicity, and failed.
They should make good their historical crimes against humanity, so we can all move forward.
Attacking the WG for trying to fix the problems that the UK government have caused is an absolutely appalling move, even for a party that employs the sickest individuals on planet earth.
I know Sir Keir has done quite a bit since the 4th of July but it a bit much to accuse him of causing the decline of the Welsh language in 8 weeks. PS were does the UK Govt get its money from? o yes the Welsh taxpayers
I’m assuming that’s a weird attempt at sarcasm as the eradication of the Welsh language has literally been written in policy for centuries. Its there in nlack and white for anyone to read.
Thr point of my post was to highlight that Welsh tax payers should not have their taxes used, but why let little facts get in the way?
ART “I am not racist but” D was bleating about libraries the other day. He is leading this charge, I doubt he would still be employed in many firms that value brand image. He most certainly would be run through the education training a few times, as this impetus seems to be aimed at. Who knows, perhaps the Tory party could benefit from this and learn something.
I don’t expect the Tories have really thought about it, it is just they read the words ‘unconscious bias’ and think, oh that’s one of those ‘woke’ buzzwords and get triggered.
I’m just as concerned about Concious Bias against yr Hen Iaith. Plenty of that amongst Unionists
Sending tory MPs to Westminster is a waste of money. Oh wait, they don’t have any Welsh MPs any more. Hen dro.
382 thousand is absolute peanuts in the context of the Welsh budget…
We see this kind of thing a lot on the political right, “Look, you have wasted all this huge amount of money on an apple I didn’t want, you could have spent that money on a Lamborghini”…
Meanwhile £7m on a new door for the House of Lords.
No lectures from Tom Giffard whose attention I’d like to draw to the ‘Woeful budgeting’ article which details Tory waste in billions. He should consider the rebuilding of our nations’ language as reparation given the time, effort and expense thrown at destroying it including sickening child abuse as they were shamed and punished for speaking it.
Cywir.
Quote: “But Shadow Welsh Language Minister Tom Giffard said spending such a sum on a “pet project” of this kind represented a colossal waste of public money.” Correct me if I am wrong but isn’t it rather hypocritical of Giffard to say this when he quite willingly takes a salary for being Shadow Welsh Language Minister who, having a title like that, should be in favour of preserving the language and having its best interests at heart. After all he earns over £90k for doing the job.
Silly money paid to silly people. What do you expect when silly people get to make up the rules ?
Yes, Shadow Welsh Language minister who should be interested in preserving it rather than denigrating and obstructing it whilst taking the coin. A great point which I missed. Surely such a person cannot occupy this position unless he can come up with how to promote and progress the use of the language using no money at all. I presume shadow to him means making the language a mere shadow of what it is now.
Said the Welsh Tories who turned a blind eye to Liz “The Lettuce” Truss losing £65 billion with her budget that nearly bankrupt Britain. More of the same hypocrisy from the Anti-Welsh Conservative trolls led by self-hating race bating Islamophobe Andrew RT Davies.
I totally agree with the Conservatives about this absloute waste of money on Wokery. This money should have gone to foodbanks or other worthy casues rather than indulge in USA stupidity of no intellectual merit.
There shouldn’t be Foodbanks in what is supposedly the Worlds 5th largest economy
That comment has completely overtaken the absolute drivel that you spout. What an absolutely vile and disgusting attitude to have.
Compared to the Tories’ £40m contract to hire a nice private helicopter for Rishi Sunak, it’s peanuts.
Is that the feasibility study done? So what next pour more money into a bucket with a hole in the bottom. Everyone involved in this programme are they all Welsh speakers as they want to “create the Wales we want” ? We?