improving government service delivery to minority ethnic ... - NCCRI

Facilitator: Daniel Holder
We came up with a definition of mainstreaming, taking account of the different realities and delivering things
in a different way. We also discussed not leaving it necessarily to the opinions and perceptions of the majority
group who will generally raise issues like language barriers or culture; but one of the key issues from a minority
perspective being racism. So we started with a definition, then we ran into of three main areas.
-
-
-
Long term planning is required. For example, there will be more cases going through industrial tribunals
employment tribunals, in which case there is a need to plan the capacity of those tribunals and increase
the capacity unless we are to be left with a huge backlog. We also discussed the resourcing issue in terms
of mainstreaming and maybe moved away from the issue purely of resourcing to one of prioritisation. Not
everything can be done, but there are examples of when maybe it’s an issue of prioritisation or an attitude
that holds things back rather than actual hard cash. There are huge amounts of additional tax revenue that
have been brought due to inward migration; what’s being done with that money; is it really a resourcing
or more a prioritising position? Of course in terms of a strategic framework we discussed the legislative
framework and the absence of a statutory duty in the South.
Martin Luther King said that legislation can’t change attitudes but it can actually make people behave. There
needs to be work on ethos and attitudes and around changing ethos and attitudes and if mainstreaming is
going to be successful. We discussed service provision areas where there is considerable discretion and
when discretion is mixed with prejudice that has a discriminatory outcome. We also discussed the fact that
as well as a positive equality duty there are negative pressures from some policies and legislation that staff
have to operate under in terms of the restrictions to access of social systems and particular services that
makes implementing that agenda difficult. Also on ethos and attitudes, there is sometimes an emphasis on
indirect discrimination which isn’t always intentional, but let’s not take our eye off the ball from the examples
of direct blatant and malicious racial discrimination, and there were very powerful examples of issues faced
by Travellers in that regard.
Some of us felt that if we were going to be able to mainstream, we didn’t feel we had the necessary skills
in the organisation to be able to mainstream, which is obviously a training issue and an issue from which
broader skills framework.
B. Targeting
Facilitator: Ronaldo Munck
Our group was primarily consisting of people working in the health sector and a lot of our discussion revolved
around issues of language, community interpreting and so on. We derived what we thought were three
principles:
-
-
-
We discussed the principle of ensuring bottom up consultative approaches because that would involve the
end user at all stages of service development and ensure therefore the relevance of the service. Without
that it isn’t possible.
The need for a dynamic approach needs to be recognised; cognisant of the ongoing situation and
of change. In other words, it’s a dynamic situation, you can’t have a one-off intervention, because it’s
constantly evolving.
There is a need for joined-up thinking within the service provider organisation and across agencies to
ensure consistency and enable opportunities for sharing good practice.