PLANS to drive forward efforts to end discrimination in Swansea and promote fairness for all citizens have been unveiled by Swansea Council.
image depicting Picture of Civic Centre
The local authority could soon be asking your views on a new Equality and Diversity Scheme which could see improvements across a range of services.
The Council's Cabinet could agree to an eight-week consultation on the scheme when it meets next week.
The project, developed with a range of partners, builds on an array of work the Council has done to promote equality over the past three years.
These range from providing information in different formats such as Braille to an award-winning social services film about services translated into different languages.
The Equality and Diversity Scheme 2009 to 2011 aims to take this work further to ensure that everyone who lives, works, or visits Swansea can feel safe and respected whatever their age, disability, gender, language, religion, belief, race or sexual orientation.
Developed in consultation with residents, community groups, and professionals it also aims to help Swansea meet the demands of proposed new legislation on equality and diversity.
Swansea Council plans to continue to promote equality of opportunity and to eliminate discrimination for all its citizens.
The draft scheme also has an action plan to show how its aims will be implemented over the next three years.
This includes proposed actions over a range of areas from providing staff training on equality, improving Swansea libraries, improving changing rooms and tackling the issue of domestic abuse to widely promoting equality.
The local authority will continue to offer support to enable people to report harassment or hate incidents wherever they occur.
Council staff and Councillors will be responsible for making sure that the scheme's aims are achieved and will be reporting on progress. Individual Swansea Councillors have been appointed as equalities champions.
Now the Council is planning to consult on the work so far to offer people the chance to comment on it.
Swansea Council Cabinet Member for Business Improvement and Efficiency, Cllr Mary Jones, said: "All Council staff and Councillors will be responsible for making sure that what the scheme promises is achieved and will be reporting on progress."