Bracknell
Forest is the borough of opportunity and a place where diversity
and cultural heritage are recognised as a strength. The council is
committed to ensuring that no one is left behind, isolated or
disadvantaged and to ensuring that Bracknell Forest is a borough of
opportunity for everyone. The council will continue to work with
and encourage vibrant local communities. We will work closely
with partners to support and engage our different communities and
organisations to ensure everyone feels included, connected and able
to contribute.
The aim of
equalities monitoring is to indicate the extent to which the
council provides a fair, accessible and appropriate service to all
residents.
The Equality
Act 2010’s
Public Sector Equality
Duty outlines the
specific duties that the council is required to meet to demonstrate
its compliance with its equality duties. The council must publish
equality information annually and publish equality objectives every
four years.
The
Equality Act 2010
places a
legal duty on Bracknell Forest Council to have due regard in all
its activities to:
- Eliminating unfair discrimination, harassment
and victimisation
- Advancing equality of opportunity
- Fostering good relationships between
people
The duty
applies across the nine ‘protected characteristics’
covered by the Act - with regard to marriage and civil
partnerships, the council is only required to ensure it eliminates
discrimination, harassment and victimisation on these
grounds. The council also considers how its services and
policies may impact on other groups including for example people
with caring responsibilities, people facing financial hardship and
the military community.
The
Bracknell Forest Equality
Scheme 2017-21 set out
what the council intended to achieve in terms of advancing equality
and diversity and includes the council’s equality
objectives. The equality scheme is linked to the service
planning process to ensure that the implementation of the equality
objectives will be integrated, wherever possible into the
mainstream delivery and monitoring of services across the
council.
Bracknell
Forest is a thriving, welcoming and inclusive community. As our
community grows and changes, Bracknell
Forest Council is committed to ensuring no one is left behind,
isolated or disadvantaged. We take great pride in our support
for vulnerable groups and individuals: we want to make sure
Bracknell Forest is a borough of opportunity for
everyone.
At Bracknell
Forest Council, we believe:
- reducing
inequalities benefits everyone in the borough
- strengthening
communities make for a better borough
- understanding
and promoting diversity improves people’s lives.
This report and
the individual service reports should be read alongside the
Equalities Monitoring - Workforce Annual Report 2020-21 which
summarises the council’s employment information.
To assess whether Bracknell Forest
Council’s services have met the legal duty to have due regard
to the specific duties, information on access, outcomes/
performance and satisfaction has been analysed for these
service areas.
COVID-19
Pandemic
Understandably
the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns affected the
majority of council services during the reporting period of April
2020 – March 2021.
Many were
closed for various periods during this time including leisure
services and libraries. The council has to explore different
ways of providing services as council offices and some face-to-face
services were closed or extremely difficult to deliver.
The continued effects of the pandemic and COVID-19
restrictions has meant some ongoing work has had to be to be
delayed due to operational pressures on service areas and the
diversion of resources to our Covid community
response.
Data has shown
COVID-19 has exacerbated health inequalities and the
council’s Public Health team have worked with partners to
ensure their response has considered a targeted approach. To
minimise the impact of the pandemic, the focus has been on testing
to find positive cases of COVID-19, contact tracing to identify
close contacts of positive cases and vaccinating eligible cohorts
for COVID-19.
In Education
and Learning the focus was on supporting schools with the impact of
the COVID-19 pandemic and the periods of partial school closure,
remote education provision and full return to school for all
pupils. There was a particular focus on provision to support
vulnerable children and young people.
Due to the
COVID-19 pandemic statutory assessments across the primary phase
and the summer 2020 GCSE, AS and A Level exam series were cancelled
in summer 2020, with the DfE confirming that there would be no
publication of any performance data at national, regional, or local
level at any phase of education.
During the
pandemic, the focus of the Library Service shifted, delivering a
digital service in the form of e-books, e-magazines and newspapers
and a programme of virtual events via Zoom, in addition to
supporting residents over the age of seventy by providing free
deliveries of books and audio-visual materials through the Home
Library Service, or to anyone who was shielding.
Funding was
also received from the Arts Council and the Reading Agency from
January to March 2021 as part of a “Reading Friends”
campaign which enabled Bracknell Forest Libraries to offer a
programme of virtual events via Zoom to combat loneliness and
social isolation for all sectors of the community. In total, 70
virtual events were held from January to March as part of this
project.
The following
are examples of work done in 2020-21 to meet the objectives of the
scheme and refer to the scheme’s key
objectives.
Children’s Social Care (CSC) have
increased opportunities for learning and development for the whole
workforce to both deepen the understanding of different cultures
and develop skills in building meaningful relationships with people
from various cultural backgrounds and identities. In addition CSC
developed and launched its
Equality and Diversity
Protocol in November
2020. The protocol recognises CSC’s responsibilities and
duties set out under the Equality Act 2010 and sets out
expectations of employees to strive for inclusiveness.
The development
of the CSC Equality and Diversity protocol ensures that there is a
commitment from the whole service to protecting people’s
human rights, and to treat everyone fairly and with respect and
dignity. With this, a programme of training to improve awareness
and understanding of diverse backgrounds has successfully enabled
staff to embed the ‘identity first’ approach, which
will be supported by future developments of our recording tools and
templates
Providing the
right early help and the right time is far more effective in
promoting the welfare of children and keeping them safe than
reacting later when problems may have become more entrenched.
Working Together to Safeguard Children (2018)[1]
sets out a clear expectation that local agencies collaborate to
identify children and young people with additional needs and work
together to ensure support as soon as a problem emerges.
The
council’s Community Cohesion and Engagement Partnership
continues to meet regularly and monitor Hate Crime and Prevent
referrals. The Community Safety report details all the work
being done in this area including around Domestic Abuse, Modern
Slavey and Exploitation and Anti-Social Behaviour and current
issues around equality of access.
The Domestic
Abuse Forum has representation from Army Welfare and survivor(s) of
domestic abuse as well as all relevant service areas.
Membership of both the Domestic Abuse Forum and the DA Executive
Group are reviewed annually with gaps in membership identified and
addressed as necessary. As part of the safe accommodation
needs assessment, some additional members of the Forum have been
identified and invited to future meetings, e.g. Support U –
an LGBT+ organisation providing help and support across the Thames
Valley.
Bracknell
Forest Council were part of a two-year Thames Valley BAMER (Black,
Asian, Minority Ethnic and Refugee) project 2018-20. The
project was funded by the Home Office VAWG (Violence Against Women
and Girls) Transformation Fund and supported by the local
authorities across the Thames Valley and the Office of the Police
and Crime Commissioner (OPCC). The project set out to
identify barriers experienced by women from ethnic minority
communities subjected to abuse or violence when needing to access
support, and to identify lessons for improving service
responses. The evaluation report has been shared with the
Bracknell Forest Domestic Abuse Executive Group, Community Safety
Partnership, Safeguarding Partnership and Community Cohesion and
Engagement Partnership. A Thames Valley-wide BAME Community
Partnership Board has been formed to continue the momentum of the
BAMER project work and in July 2021 a Berks wide group (including
North East Hants and Surrey Heath) was formed to drive forward
local delivery of the recommendations from the
report.
We aim
to support the most vulnerable people in the borough
through prevention and self-care which is tailored to
different segments of the local community and their
needs.
The Office for
National Statistics (2021) states that in 2020 around half of
disabled people aged 16 to 64 years (52.1%) in the UK were in
employment compared with around 8 in 10 (81.3%) for non-disabled
people (July to September 2020); disabled people with autism were
among those disabled people with the lowest employment
rate.
To support the
employment needs of individuals with a learning disability and
autism Bracknell Forest Council run a supported employment service
called Breakthrough who provide advice and support to people in all
aspects of looking for and sustaining meaningful employment
opportunities. Breakthrough services have supported over 80
vulnerable people with various levels of support.
There is a lack
of specialist accommodation for individuals with a learning
disability and autism. The Learning Disability team have
formed strong relationships with local housing providers and also
work very closely with the council housing team to source
specialist housing. This includes support with emergency placements
and the sourcing of long term adapted accommodation. This secures
accommodation for individuals with complex needs and reduces the
need to place individuals out of borough. Individuals with complex
needs have been placed into adapted accommodation in the last year
despite the covid restrictions, this has however impacted waiting
times for families. In terms of our current placements
in accommodation, compared to our neighbouring councils, BFC has
got the lowest number of people with Learning Disabilities and
Autism in residential care homes, over 90% of our placements are in
supported living accommodation which is a true success of promotion
of choice, community integration and independence.
In Early Years
during the reporting period the work of the service has focused on
support for early years providers, children and families and the
impact of COVID-19. Due to suspension of face to face
services, some children (and their families) at risk of
communication and language delay were supported virtually, this
enabled progress to be monitored and tracked. Early
Years providers offered support to those families unable to access
services including a variety of home learning opportunities were
delivered including resources delivered to family homes to enable
children and families to engage in learning activities
The Family
Information and Early Years teams sourced and secured alternative
childcare for critical worker families where their usual
arrangements were not able to meet need. There was also partnership
working with Children’s Social Care (CSC) to encourage
vulnerable children to access their entitlement and consideration
to other sources of support as required. Support was also sourced
for families known to CSC who required support within the home
during this time.
We are committed to
having workforce policies and practices that promote
an inclusive culture and ensure that we do not discriminate. We
provide equal opportunities for employees to progress and develop
and are responsive to the needs of the workforce. We
also ensure our workforce understands and
supports our equality commitments.
The
council’s Equality Group has recently been strengthened to
ensure it is representative of different areas across the
council. An Elected Members equality group was also set up
with representatives of all political parties.
Although this
report relates to April 2020 – March 2021 it is important to
note the many issues around equality that have been highlighted as
a result of the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic from March 2020.
Many existing inequalities have been exacerbated by the
effects of the pandemic which has disproportionally affected
certain groups including those from ethnic minority backgrounds and
more vulnerable residents.
Following two
reports published in June by Public Health England; a report on
COVID-19 inequalities in relation to the BAME community was
submitted to the Corporate Management Team in September. An
action plan has now been put into place to respond to the findings
of the report.
The council
undertook a second
detailed phone survey
in April 2021 to determine the
impact of the coronavirus pandemic on residents, their family and
the local community. The responses highlight the
negative impact of the pandemic on more vulnerable
residents. Certain population groups including those
living in social housing, disabled, older
residents, those living in social housing and more deprived
areas of the borough have been more adversely impacted
and may require more support than others to recover from the
experience of the
pandemic.
There were also
questions regarding future recovery of the
borough and the council’s priorities to help the borough
recover. The results
showed residents want the council to
support the local economy to recover, while supporting
vulnerable people to recover, keeping residents safe and
promoting and enforcing public health messages and
guidelines. Supporting more vulnerable residents to recover
reflects the work being done as part of the council’s
community response to the pandemic. The confidential
responses will continue to be used to help us plan for the
borough’s renewal from COVID-19 over the next 3
years.
The council as a
part of its recovery planning is exploring how it can continue to
support residents and the local economy recover from
Covid.
Bracknell
Forest Council is committed to providing excellent customer service
and to
providing fair
and appropriate access to services that are tailored to meet the
individual needs of the residents and diverse communities living in
Bracknell Forest.
This report and
the associated service area reports show that Bracknell Forest
Council made good progress in meeting the three Public Sector
duties in the Equality Act 2010 to eliminate discrimination,
victimisation and harassment, advance equality of opportunity and
foster good relations between people in 2020-21.
During 2021 the
council has developed a new equality scheme from 2022-25.
Bracknell Forest Council’s Equality Scheme 2022-2025 builds
on the good progress made over the previous years and further
embeds equality, diversity and inclusion in everything we do to
make Bracknell Forest the Borough of Opportunity for all.
As a council we aim to provide high
quality, appropriate and accessible services that meet the needs of
our diverse communities. We want to ensure consistency in the
delivery of our equality, inclusion, and diversity work across the
council. It is cross directorate and part of everyday business and
it is the duty of all of us to understand, respect and value
difference.
We will
continue to take equalities into account when making
decisions to ensure they are made in a fair, transparent and
accountable way which considers the needs and rights of different
individuals and communities.
In developing the equalities objectives in
this scheme, we held workshops and discussions with community and
voluntary groups, partner organisations as well as elected members
and staff. This was followed by an online consultation open
to all residents, staff and elected members.
The Equality Scheme sets out our five key
equality objectives toaddress
inequalities in our role as community leader and an employer.
These apply to all the council’s functions, the
council’s role as a service provider and in our work with our
communities. The full equality scheme will be published in
April 2022.
6
Council Performance Indicators Relating to
Equalities
