Overview
Social justice is the societal movement and view that everyone should be treated fairly, equally and have the same human rights and opportunities regardless of social, ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Our goal is to produce impactful and policy changing research by reporting and raising awareness of inequalities, and to advocate for equity of access to healthcare, education, and opportunities across the lifetime to support a progressive Wales.
The research team will prioritise research areas with policy makers to ensure research outputs are policy relevant and that inclusion and equality are embedded as part of ADR Wales outputs.
Our research agenda will cover inequalities in health outcomes, treatment, accessibility to services, opportunities, and education for the population of Wales, and will utilise linked routinely-collected anonymised, individual-level, population-scale demographic, health, environmental, administrative and social data held in the Secure Anonymised Information Linkage (SAIL) Databank. We will define person characteristics and categorise social groups to ensure marginalised and vulnerable people are represented in the research to reduce inequalities and unfairness.
Social Justice Research Areas
- Research into the current descriptions and characteristics of the population of Wales
- Research into the interrelation and inequalities between socio-economic, ethnic and marginalised groups and health outcomes
- Research into major societal challenges in Wales and the impact on vulnerable and marginalised individuals
- Using data to evaluate, inform and refine interventions and care to tackle health inequity
- Using data to inform and refine accessibility and equity to services and opportunities
- Surveillance of violence against minority ethnic groups, LGBQTIA+, females and vulnerable individuals
The research under this theme will support priority areas identified in the Welsh Government Programme for Government 2021-26, Anti-racist Wales Action Plan, Advancing Gender Equality Plan, LGBTQ+ Action Plan for Wales, Locked out: liberating disabled people’s lives and rights in Wales beyond Covid-19, The Co-operation Agreement and the Welsh Health Equity Status Report initiative.
Priorities
This cross-cutting research theme will focus on covering inequalities in health outcomes, treatment, accessibility to services, opportunities, and education for the population of Wales. Policy relevant research outputs will provide evidence to help identify, better understand, and eliminate inequality in all its forms.
ADR Wales contributed to the new Equality, Race and Disability Disparity Evidence Units strategy and priorities (2022-2027) which recognises the value of data linking to address challenges around the visibility of minority populations. We expect to continue to work closely together to better understand and characterise the population of Wales in terms of social justice.
We will look at disadvantaged groups and health outcomes, identifying the interrelation and inequalities between socio-economic, ethnic and marginalised groups and health outcomes. We will use data to evaluate, inform and refine interventions and care to tackle health inequalities. We will look at inequalities in treatment between groups of people and the equity of access to treatments. We will use data to inform and refine accessibility and equity to services and opportunities, and we will look at inequalities in education and inequalities in work and progression.
We will look at the impact of major societal challenges in Wales and the impact on vulnerable and marginalised individuals. We will explore the impact of the cost-of-living crisis on struggling families and individuals, the impacts of fuel poverty by different population subgroups and evaluate the cost-of-living crisis in Wales using fuel poverty data. We also aim to evaluate national interventions and schemes that promote equity and well-being such as the Basic Income Scheme for care leavers.
Further, we will examine reported violence against minority ethnic groups, disabled people, LGBQTIA+, women and non-binary people.
Projects
Publications
Report: The health of older children and young people subject to care proceedings in Wales
Report: Born into care: One thousand mothers in care proceedings in Wales