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

Mainstreaming
The Scottish Executive’s Equality Strategy emphasises the importance of mainstreaming equality and that
the Race Relations Amendment Act 2000 requires public authorities to publish a Race Equality Scheme. The
Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) Scotland has played an advisory role to many public bodies in relation to
their racial equality duties. Under the Equality Bill, the CRE will be replaced by a Commission for Equality and
Human Rights (CEHR).
Case examples include the National Resource Centre for Ethnic Minority Health (NRCEMH).
Targeting
This section explores the tensions between mainstreaming and targeting and finds that both approaches have
risks but both are important. The Executive’s Fresh Talent initiative which aims to encourage people to migrate
to Scotland to live and work could be undermined by the levels of racism found in previous surveys. A number
of initiatives seek to change public attitudes, including the One Scotland Many Cultures campaign.
Case examples include the Central Scotland Police Safer Businesses for Ethnic Minorities initiative and a
primary healthcare project for asylum seekers.
Benchmarking
The Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 requires that all public authorities monitor, by ethnic groups,
all employees and applicants for jobs, promotion and training. It also requires that schools and Education
Authorities monitor pupil attainment levels by racial group.
In relation to data collection, the Census is the key national data collection mechanism. There has been
research carried out on amending the ethnic classifications used in the Census. In addition, data is available
from the Annual Scottish Labour Force Survey, the Scottish Household Survey Annual Report and the Scottish
Crime Survey.
A benchmarking case example describing health initiatives to improve data collection on minority ethnic groups
is included in this section.
Engagement
The Local Government Scotland Act 2003 aims to ensure that communities are genuinely engaged in the
decisions made on public services that affect them.
Case examples in this section include good practice guides on consultation and engagement, developed by
the Scottish Executive and Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA).
The conclusion of the Scottish section finds that the Race Relations Amendment Act 2000 has brought major
changes to the race equality agenda in Scotland, although a criticism has been voiced that it has generated
mountains of paper policies but not necessarily a corresponding amount of action.
While there is evidence of much targeted services for Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) communities, there is
a need to move from a position of specialist provision that is not securely funded to one where it is recognised
that the processes for delivering appropriate services to the whole community requires differential methods.
Though targeting is important way of delivering services to BME communities it has to be seen in the context of
mainstreaming otherwise a two-tier system for service delivery develops.