Agenda item

Verbal update. Presentation by Christina Andrew.

Christina Andrew, Strategic Lead for Communities and Inequalities, provided an update on the Partnership Programme Plan Addressing Racism and Racial Discrimination. The presentation covered the following points:

• The last coordinating group meeting was held in May and a framework was formed for the activity that was being delivered. This included:

o   Working with the BAME Equality Working Group to draw together data on disproportionality and the mental health system including the use of Section 136 powers and the high proportion of use with the young, black male population.

o   Reviewed the categories used for ethnicity and nationality in the equality monitoring forms to ensure that these were fit for purpose and reflective of local people.

o   Delivery of an Equal Start Project at Lea Valley Primary School led by the Bridge Renewal Trust which involved the delivery of laptops to children without digital access and saw engagement in homework dramatically increase among young people in most need of support. 

o   The establishment of a number of community networks.

• £43,000 had been secured through Health Education England to deliver mental health first aid training to local Police through MIND in Haringey which would take place over the next six months.
• The first Diversity in the Public Realm engagement meeting had been held with partner and community stakeholders. This had been triggered by the Commission on Diversity in the Public Realm which was established by the Mayor of London. This involved understanding our local heritage and what that means for discrimination throughout the system. A follow up session would be held in the coming months.
• The Urban Regeneration Team had developed its own guidance on equality, diversity and inclusion in procurement and were working with other teams on how this might be adopted once it had been formalised.
• A workshop had been held on the partnership response to hate crime in collaboration with faith communities and to launch the Council’s anti-discrimination campaign to encourage people to come forward when they had experienced hate crime.
• The Parks service had started a pilot project to use an equitable recruitment model looking at how they reach out to diverse communities to encourage them to apply for jobs and to provide support to keep people in roles once they had started employment.

Geoffrey Ocen, Chief Executive of the Bridge Renewal Trust, provided details of the Racial Equity in Health & Social Care Group which had held its first meeting in June 2022 and would next meet in October 2022 and February 2023. The Group was co-Chaired by Geoffrey Ocen and Dr Nnenna Osuji, Chief Executive of the North Middlesex University Hospital NHS Trust.

The Group aimed to tackle issues of inequality and structural racism across health and social care services as it applied in Haringey and was driven partly by a report from the NHS Race and Health Observatory published in February 2022 which looked at inequalities in terms of access, experiences and outcomes. The group would also act as a forum for clinicians and non-clinicians to have a constructive dialogue on working together and sharing good practice.

Issues that the Group had been considering included digital access, workforce diversity, maternity, severe mental illness, chronic respiratory disease, early cancer diagnosis and hypertension case-finding.

Christina Andrew then commented on the Theory of Change approach being used to aim towards long term objectives and taking the right actions. This would help teams and partnership work together on a shared understanding of a project’s aims, clarifying roles and responsibilities, considering evidence and determine what needed to be measured through evaluation activity.

Each of the theme leads had been tasked with thinking about the kind of long-term objectives that they wanted to work towards in their specific thematic area and this would be brought back to a discussion at the next coordinating group meeting at the end of September.

Christina Andrew outlined the establishment of a number of Community Networks over the last 18 months, facilitated by the Council and partners. This would enable statutory services and partners to engage with community members and organisations to build trust and better understand key issues.

Asked by Cllr das Neveswhether a write-up of the impact of the Equal Start Project at Lea Valley Primary School could be shared, Geoffrey Ocen commented that there an evaluation had been carried out which could be shared (ACTION) and that there was an ambition to scale this project up and duplicate it elsewhere but that would depend on funding and resources.

Asked by Cllr das Neves about the make-up of the Racial Equity in Health & Social Care Group, Geoffrey Ocen said that it included a mix of operational people of the ground as well as policy-makers. This included people from mental health, equality, diversity & inclusion leaders from the NHS Trusts and the Council as well as representatives of the GP Federation and Hospital Trusts. Cllr das Neves commented that it would be useful to consider how this group could fit with the wider localities approach.