Fonds GB 0210 WATAFR - Welsh Arts Therapies Advisory Forum Records

The All Wales Network Committee for Arts Therapies Professions was set up in early 1989 to support arts therapists across Wales working in the NHS and those working privately to provide a professional network, education and training programme. This group was unique in that it accommodated all of the arts therapies professions that is Art, Drama, Music, Dance Movement Therapies. This was a way for these small professional to support and benefit from each other. In the rest of the UK , England, Scotland and Ireland, the individual professions met separately. It is only in the recent years that Scotland has followed suit. There is currently or has ever been an equivalent forum like this in England. From the first meeting the minutes have always been translated into Welsh, so this is a bilingual record of the development of the arts therapies professions in Wales. Laterly, the name of the advisory committee was changed to the Welsh Arts Therapies Advisory Forum (WATAF), in 2013, this was to enable the group to have a representation on the Government ‘Welsh Therapies Advisory Committee’ (WTAC). Again this is unique to Wales. The Arts Therapies in the rest of the UK still do not have such a close representation to Government. This is a voluntary group and it is a tribute to those Arts Therapist in Wales, who over the years have given their time to successive Welsh Governments for the promotion of the Arts Therapies Professions in health care in Wales. Currently there are two groups we call sister groups one, for those that work within the NHS, so that NHS issues do not dominate the concerns of those therapist who work in different setting or work privately.