Agenda item

·  The Council is reviewing the way in which it thinks about and delivers strategies and services to best engage with and meet the needs of the resident population in 2023.

·  To our knowledge this is the first time a cultural competency assessment has been completed by a London borough. It follows on from the recent substance misuse needs assessment which found under-representation of certain ethic cohorts in treatment when compared with the general borough profile.

·  Via consultation with local professionals, this review examined:

-The reasons global majority residents may be reluctant to access services.

- How key strategic partners across local authority departments, criminal justice, health, and voluntary sector have adapted their policies and working practices to engage with/ meet the needs of different communities

- Which communities services are struggling to engage with.

- What more could be done.

·  Key findings of the review:

- No uniform standard for collection of ethnicity data

- No lived experience input from faith/global majority communities into the review.

- Many agencies have no influence over the ethnicity profile of their service users.

- Some shift observed in the ethnicity profile of service users in the past 5 years.

- Most prevalent barrier to accessing services perceived as language.

- Gypsy Roma Travellers (GRT)/ \Irish Travellers and Eastern Europeans cited as communities hardest to engage.

- Some successes cited engaging Youth Offenders, Eastern European, Rough sleepers, and LGBTQ communities.

- Every one of the surveyed organisations completed some form of Equality Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) or Unconscious bias training on an annual mandatory basis.

·  10 recommendations made as a part of this review:

1.  Consider this review as part of the wider suite of Barking & Dagenham Council strategies and policies re Equality Diversity and Inclusion:

2.  Consider cultural competency when reviewing/updating organisational Strategies and Policies

3.  Continue to seek out lived experience insights from Faith/global majority communities to feed into reviews.

4.  Embed Standardised collection of ethnicity data

5.  Agreed/shared definition of cultural competency across Barking & Dagenham

6.  Convene an event to promote cultural competency

7.  Organisations to strive to be more culturally competent following the principles identified in this review and the collated best practice.

8.  Continue to address language barriers.

9.  Address potential unmet need in specific communities.

10.Maintain commitment to Induction/ annual training around topics which nurture cultural competence such as

Councillor Worby suggests that this plan and the recommendations within it must go through the proper governance process in order to agree recommendations and agree the ‘global majority’ term within the plan as a council. While the plan has come through to the CSP it has not gone through cabinet and this plan must be looked at in the wider context. There are issues in engagement with eastern Europeans as one example of a hard to reach group and within the ethnicity data breakdown eastern Europeans are categorised as ‘White Other,’ which is not representative.

Clare confirmed that that terms within the plan had been discussed at the STAR Work Group and that there was no universal categorisation of ethnicity. In terms of the plan, the UK government standard of population, ethnicity, culture, and language had been adopted.

Stuart Bell confirms with Clare Brutton that they are seeking from CSP partners comments in relation to next steps of the plan and assures Cllr Worby’s comments will be implemented. Stuart Bell reflects on the plan and states that within the Casey Report and wider police work there are issues in engaging with various cohorts of the community.

Matthew Cole highlighted that in order to gauge service impact providers must be recording the ethnicity and culture of clients and questioned whether the metrics of this recording of data is going to be changed.

Stuart Bell suggested as a part of this work that the recording of data in relation to ethnicity should be as similar as possible across the board as to ensure a standardised data set.

Matthew Cole suggested that at a very basic level the ethnicity criteria should be done the same way across the partnership.

Stuart Bell announced that Gary Jones and David Rhodes are working together to develop joint service provision through the boroughs community hubs in order to increase resident engagement.

April Bald agreed that getting feedback from the partnership around the consultants 10 recommendations is sensible. During the process of producing an anti-racist practices for staff it was notable that defining what cultural competence was how this translate across the partnerships service delivery. Intersectionality of ethnicity, gender and age need to be applied and In particular there are increased barriers to women and girls accessing drug and alcohol services.

Clare Brutton acknowledges that the offer Is not perfect and that she looks forward to working with partners to hear their thoughts and feedback. Clare Brutton will link in with her Director and elected members in order to reflect on comments made today.

Cllr Ghani noted that emphasis should be made on recruiting ethnic minority staff and funding translators for ethnic minority clients. Cllr Ghani suggests that this work should receive further support for interactive data mapping work.

Matthew Cole suggested to view what the approach of sister boroughs are taking in tackling drug and alcohol misuse.

Amolak Tatter responded that the sister boroughs have begun thinking about doing a similar strand of work ad that LBBD’s learning can also be shared to other boroughs. Clare Brutton also confirmed that the consultant’s contact details have been shared with neighbouring boroughs. 

ACTION – Clare Brutton and Amolak Tatter to reach out to Yasir (Police – Senior Lead for Communities and Engagement)  through David Rhodes and link in on how to increase community engagement with hard to reach communities.

ACTION – Clare and Amolak to engage with partnership where appropriate to seek further feedback around plans recommendations

ACTION – Partners to go away and review the 10 recommendations within the plan and provide feedback at September’s CSP, where if all agree the recommendations can be agreed.

ACTION – Clare Brutton to link in with the work Gary Jones and David Rhodes around the joint service provision to get insight around community engagement activity.