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On social care, Ms Jarman said: “I’m very eager to see progress on Plaid’s policy of making social care free at the point of delivery as is healthcare.
“I hope that is one area that the Welsh Government will invest in sooner rather than later.
“Now that the National Insurance contributions are going up and that money is intended to underwrite the cost of a change in social care, then hopefully that will be invested to enable everyone in Wales to benefit from care services free at the point of delivery as they are with the health service.”
On education, she said Plaid have raised the need to improve childcare provision from the age of two and to make it universally available with the Welsh Government.
She said: “We are also eager to expand on the free school meal entitlement. The party’s policy is to extend it to the secondary sector as well as the primary sector.
“No child in this day and age should have to go hungry and it isn’t a case of just filing their belly it’s about filing their mind as well because powers of concentration are affected.”
She said: “Absenteeism at the minute is running very high across Rhondda Cynon Taf and I would want to invest in more support staff to work with families because I think some of the children may have got out of the habit of attending school.”
She said more investment in children with additional learning needs is an “absolute priority” as more and more children are being identified as having specific needs through ADHD and autism.
Ms Jarman said there have been very good results under the teacher assessments over the past two years for GCSE, AS and A-levels and she’s hoping that the return of the public examination regime will enable that strong progress to be maintained.
Speaking about the importance of voting and getting involved in democracy, Ms Jarman said: “Everyone’s opinion is important and putting that cross against your preferred candidate obviously entitles you at a future date to have your say knowing that you were a part of the democratic process. That is what it is all about.”
She added: “You can forgive people for feeling very isolated and feeling very fragile. I try to lift their spirits and say ‘go out and vote and then you’ve got the absolute entitlement to be very vocal in your disappointments as well as your pleasures’.”
INDEPENDENTS
THE leader of the independents group wants to see a more Rhondda Cynon Taf-wide approach to decision making.
Mike Powell, who has led the RCT independents group and represented Trallwn ward on the council, said he hopes to see more fairness in how decisions are made.
He said the cost of living is going to be a monumental issue for lots of families in the borough as they cast their votes.
He said: “The answer to it obviously lies with the Westminster government to a great extent and then likewise with the Senedd and then down to RCT itself.
“I suppose you could argue that RCT’s done its bit by only increasing council tax by 1% this year but again there are things the council could be doing with its budget which would greatly assist people.”
He said one of the things the independents group is going to be advocating for is to reintroduce full-time nursery provision for three-year-olds.
Mr Powell said this would allow people to go out and work to earn money to pay the bills because at the moment there’s a provision from 9am until noon, parents don’t have sufficient time to get a fulfilling and reasonably well paid job. He said: “It’s a huge problem. It really is. And we should be doing more.”
Mr Powell said: “We’ve got to look at how the council does expend its budget and obviously there are people who are in greater need in certain areas than others.“But by the same token you’ve got to have a fair expenditure of that budget.”
On spending, he mentioned Pontypridd which pays the highest council tax in the whole of the borough and when there is spending there, in places like Ynysangharad Park, it’s always grant funded.
He said the town needs to get a fairer spend and he highlighted the fact the council is not planning a BMX track in Ynysangharad Park while one has been built in Aberdare with grant and council funding. He said the borough is still run as if it’s three separate county councils – Rhondda, Cynon and the Taff-Ely area.
Mr Powell said: “We do need to be more cohesive in our approach to the whole of the borough especially with service provision.”
He said they want to see more BMX tracks, more skate parks and more facilities for youngster to burn off excess energy and get them outside.
Mr Powell said as well as dealing with ward responsibilities, elected representatives need to take a “more proactive and a more broader approach” to the running of the authority as a whole.
What extra things does he think the council could be doing?
He said they could look at using the Pontypridd Lido all year round instead of only six or seven months of the year as it’s still being heated.
Mr Powell said one of the ideas the independent group has is to issue season tickets so all residents can use it throughout the year, subject to costings covering staffing costs.
He said it’s about using facilities smarter, including schools, which he said could be used for community activities. He said they need councillors who can drive the authority forward so it is a leading council in Wales.
One example Mr Powell gave of a thing the council could do differently is disabled parking bays.
He said the council only puts 12 in every year although there are hundreds of people who meet the criteria applying for them.
He said when they do the residents’ parking bays, they can put the disabled parking bays in at no extra cost to the authority because the road traffic order can encompass them in it which would reduce the waiting list of people applying for them.
He said: “You’re probably not going to save money doing it but what you will do is provide a better service and a bigger service by doing it differently to what they do now.
“They’re all little things. To my mind they’re just little things which we can do and actually provide a better service to the people who we are elected to represent and for the same buck get a bigger bang.”
Speaking about being chair of the finance and performance scrutiny committee, he said they look at the whole of the expenditure of the council and trying to get decisions which benefit everybody.
He said they need joined-up thinking and a game plan.
Mr Powell said: “One thing that irritates me is when you get some areas treated differently to other areas.”
On education concerns, he made reference
to Pontypridd losing both its sixth forms with Pontypridd High and Hawthorn High set to become 3-16 schools although there are similar schools in other areas.
He said it would be difficult for people to go to Coleg y Cymoedd for their A-levels because if there’s only a couple of people wanting to do physics, it won’t run the course.
But he said Coleg y Cymoedd is closer to Aberdare Community School and they’re not shutting the sixth form there and asked: “Why are the children and the residents of Aberdare and the Cynon Valley being treated differently to the children and the residents of Pontypridd?”
“We need more independents elected to make sure that the policies which are implemented in Rhondda Cynon Taf are borough wide policies” not just cherry picking one area saying it’s ‘totally unfair’,” he added.
He said the transition from year six to seven will see pupils from other primary schools going to Pontypridd High, for example, that will have less broad an education than those children who’ve been there from the age of three as they won’t have had the same specialist education.
He said: “If you want a plan for a year, grow rice, if you want a plan for 10 years, grow trees. If you want a plan for education, plan for 100 years.”
He said the start needs to be fair and equal for everybody to make sure people get the best education they possibly can to reach their full attainment so they can actively participate to the best of their abilities in the world we are in.
On the prospects for the independents going into the election, Mr Powell said they’ve got more than 20 candidates standing at the moment who are already delivering leaflets and having a good response on the doorstep.
He said: “I think people are getting a bit fed up of party politics and to a degree rightly so.
“You will get that better more inclusive membership of the authority the more independents you get.”
He said independents will look at not just their ward but the whole borough.
“We need to be looking at the whole borough rather than these piecemeal little parochial things.”