The Reshaping Legal Services Conference brought together key themes relevant to my research: justice from a Welsh perspective, data and inclusion and diversity. This blog uses evidence from my internship within the Welsh Government’s Equality, Race, and Disability Evidence Units to highlight the importance of aligning theory, lived experience and data to achieve inclusion and diversity.
My PhD research evidenced that to redress barriers to justice we need to consider how inequalities manifest within society. Theory needs to be supported by lived experience and that knowledge needs to be incorporated into research designs for data collection. These elements are not always aligned and can create a disconnection between the data gathered and what we want to use the data for. An impactful way to highlight this in a short blog is to consider inclusion of disabled people.
The theory tells us that the social model of disability is key for understanding structural barriers to full inclusion. Lived experience informs us that medical conditions do not affect people in the same way and that a person may have multiple types of impairment. In short, disability is not homogenous. Yet when we collect data on disabled people’s experiences it is often presented as homogenous: all disabled people are compared to non-disabled people. This is in opposition to lived experience. The data collected is disconnected from its need, providing limited information when drafting strategies for fairer outcomes.
During my internship, I analysed the National Survey for Wales[1] (the National Survey) to determine if the quality and granularity of the equality data could be improved. This provided an opportunity to explore ways to reflect lived experience and not treat all disabled people as a homogenous group. Up to six separate illnesses or conditions were collected for each respondent to the National Survey. This allowed comparisons between people with no impairments (the non-disabled group) and people with one impairment and two or more types of impairment. The illnesses and conditions were recoded across four impairment groups: physical, mental health, sensory and communicative, and cognitive including neurodiverse.
The 2017-18 National Survey asked a subset of respondents if they had experienced a problem in the last 12months and how confident they were that everyone has access to the legal system. The evidence generated from these two questions when analysing by impairments is enlightening.
By aligning the theory, lived experience and the data, more insight is garnered. Disabling barriers are not homogenous and the differences are large. The no impairment group have the lowest percentage of problems experienced and the highest confidence in access to the justice system (22% and 58% respectively). Whilst respondents with a mental health impairment have the opposite. Over half of all respondents with a mental health problem have experienced a problem (52%). This is 30% higher than non-disabled people and 26% higher than people with a physical impairment. The data also reveals a decrease in confidence levels with each additional impairment type as well as an increase in problems. The differences between people with physical impairments compared to mental health impairments could suggest that physical barriers such as inaccessible buildings may not be the primary cause of inequalities for disabled people accessing the legal system. Standardised approaches in inclusion strategies that primarily prioritise this may not be as effective as needed as each impairment type needs to be considered and greater support is needed for those with multiple impairments.
If we are to properly include the excluded, theory, lived experience and the framing of data must align.
[1] The National Survey for Wales is an annual household survey involving 12,000 participants from across Wales and covers a range of topics, including justice. It also contains several National Well-being Indicators which collect data on Wales’s progress towards its well-being goals. One such goal is a more equal Wales.
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