Our commitment to anti-racism

We started the Improving Outcomes for Young Black Men Programme in 2015. It aimed to tackle the inequalities facing Black boys and young Black men in Hackney.

In 2023, we extended the programme to address inequalities facing all Black children, including Black girls and young Black women. This work is now an important part of our Anti-Racist Framework and has been renamed the Improving Outcomes for Children and Young People Programme.

The purpose of the programme is to help every Black child and young person in Hackney have better opportunities and futures. We do this by creating long-term systems change in:

• education
• mental health and wellbeing
• employment and skills
• reducing harm in policing and criminal justice processes

The programme is a partnership between:

• the council
• statutory services such as the police and NHS
• residents
• young people and families
• voluntary and community organisations
  academics

Resident Accountability Board

In 2020, we created the Resident Accountability Board.

Juliet Coley, who was a Senior Deputy Headteacher, chairs the board and board members include Deji Adeoshun, Davis Williams, Renea Henry-Kemp, Alanis Hernandez and Joseph Dixon.

The board:

• holds Hackney leaders to account in their decision-making
• checks on the programme’s progress
• offers challenges
• finds areas for improvement
• makes recommendations

For more information or to get involved, email lisa-raine.hunt@hackney.gov.uk.

We adopt the theory of change to identify where and how inequality exists, and agree the changes that the programme wants to see. It’s developed with the University of East London and an independent race equality think tank, and informed through talking and listening to the community.

We host more than 100 academics, council officers, partners and community members in November 2017 to an event to consider research and evidence of what works; and to learn from academics and social researchers working on issues relating to the experiences of young Black men.

Leadership

Youth leaders group of young Black men first established, by community partners HCVS, in partnership with us. They work with senior leaders to help develop the understanding of what is driving inequality and what’s needed. They are also employed to inspire others and influence policy by delivering workshops in schools and community groups, participating in Scrutiny and meeting key civil servants in central government.

Employment

The Moving on Up Programme at HCVS was delivered with funding from the Trust for London. The project, one of six funded across London, works with 123 young people, 58% of whom find employment as a result. It demonstrates the importance of targeted work that helps people develop their skills and emphasises changing employer attitudes and practices rather than just focusing on what prospective candidates need to do.

The work is externally evaluated and the learning from the programme helped influence how things are done locally and regionally, including the Inclusive Employer programme and the Greater London Authority’s Workforce Integration Network, which supports young Black boys and men to access good-quality employment in the digital and construction sectors.

Inspired by our focus on improving outcomes of Young Black Men, East London Business Alliance launched the Parity Project in 2017 which seeks to increase businesses’ understanding of the issues of young Black men and ways to support their professional development. This leads to more than 250 young men securing employment, with that work continuing.

We launched our own apprenticeship programme in 2017. From the outset, employing young Black men has been a key goal, linked to the Improving Outcomes for Young Black Men Programme.

Since then:

• young men have been trained as inspirational leaders to help others and deliver workshops in schools and community groups
• headteachers have been working to reduce inequalities in schools
• health teams have created new mental health initiatives
• hundreds of young black men have been directly helped into work

We create an Inclusive Leadership Training programme to improve diversity in the workplace, especially at senior levels of the organisation, to tackle unconscious bias and to report on our ethnicity pay gap.

As a result:

• 35 inclusion champions recruited and trained to deliver inclusive leadership training to senior managers
• we rolled out cultural competency training to ensure managers are more confident in engaging with diverse staff and community interests
• people from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds appointed to senior roles

We are the first local authority in the UK to pass a motion regarding the Windrush Generation committing us to fight for the justice of those affected by the Windrush scandal concerning people who were:

• wrongly detained
• denied legal rights
• threatened with deportation

The motion proposes to:

• continue campaigning for an end to all hostile environment policy measures and to call on the government to enable the Windrush Generation to acquire British citizenship at no cost and with assistance throughout the process
• lead the way, by celebrating an annual Windrush Day in Hackney, and for us to welcome the government’s announcement to make 22 June each year an annual celebration of recognise and honour the enormous contribution of those who arrived between 1948 and 1971
• press the Prime Minister to call for an independent public enquiry into the Windrush scandal
• demand the government supports advice agencies in their work to achieve justice for all Hackney residents of the Windrush generation
• review our policies and procedures to ensure we support those affected
• support the call for fees for naturalisation to be waived for all those who have been affected
• oppose the criminalisation of Windrush families

We pass a motion that commits to being an anti racist organisation. One that doesn’t just tackle inequality, but actively fights racism in the borough.

The motion acknowledges that:

• Black people are more likely to be stopped and searched by the police
• Black children have rates of permanent exclusion about three times that of the pupil population as a whole
• a public health england report found that the Black, Asian and Global Majority communities have been disproportionately impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic.

In response, we resolve to:

• publish our anti-racism programme of work from across council services in one publicly available report, and ask our partners to pledge their commitment to anti-racism in the borough
• strengthen the partnership between us and youth representatives to hold the local police to account through the Youth IAG (account) and to campaign for policing by consent
• provide guidance and tools to Hackney’s schools to create a diverse and antiracist curriculum that educates children and young people on Britain’s role in upholding systemic racism, and our borough’s local diverse history
• better reflect Hackney’s diversity and anti-racist history in the borough’s public spaces
• improve the diversity of the senior leadership of the council
• lobby for an independent inquiry into the government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and whether their actions helped or hindered the protection of Hackney’s Black communities
• put in place initiatives and activities to raise awareness, educate on the history of people of African-descent, and promote their contributions to contemporary societies

Two new public artworks celebrating and honouring Hackney’s Windrush Generation are commissioned. They are to be the first permanent public sculptures to honour the Windrush legacy in the UK.

The works:

• serve as a permanent expression of solidarity with the Windrush Generation
• are recognition of the significant contribution they have made to life in Hackney and the UK
• symbolise the ongoing commitment from the borough to provide refuge and welcome to worldwide migrants

2021

Veronica Ryan’s series of large marble and bronze sculptures of Caribbean fruit and vegetables are placed by St Augustine’s Tower, in Narrow Way, Hackney Central.

The inspiration for Veronica’s sculptures comes from her childhood visits to Ridley Road Market.

Her work goes on to win the Turner Prize 2022.

2022

Thomas J Price’s artwork is unveiled in Hackney Town Hall Square. Thomas creates 2 large-scale bronze sculptures, a physical representation of individual people from the African Caribbean diaspora. He created the sculpture using photo archives from Hackney Museum, Hackney Archives, and 3D scans of Hackney Windrush residents and descendants.

We launch a review of statues and names of buildings, streets, parks and other public spaces to ensure they reflect Hackney’s diversity, and history of fighting racism.

We listened to the views of residents and others about how to tackle public spaces that are named after slave and plantation owners.

Contested figures include:

• John Cass (1661 to 1718) – a major figure at the Royal African Company
• Francis Tyssen (1625 to 1699) – an absentee plantation owner, and owner of enslaved Africans
• Cecil John Rhodes PC (1853 to 1902) – a British imperialist whose policies and practices have had a lasting negative effect on Southern Africa
• Robert Geffrye (1613 to 1704) – an East India merchant, and investor in the Royal African Company

The Review, Rename and Reclaim process involves consultation with residents and businesses situated on roads and spaces identified by the review.

2021

Cassland Road Gardens is renamed Kit Crowley Gardens after prominent local community figure Kathleen ‘Kit’ Crowley. This was following a public consultation during which more than 600 residents and park users voted. Kit was born in 1918 to an English mother and Barbadian father, and experienced poverty and racism growing up in Hackney.

Tyssen Primary School is rebranded Oldhill School following a consultation with parents and children. The overwhelming majority was in favour of removing the old name. We led interactive design workshops with the children to help create a new logo.

2022

The Review, Rename and Reclaim model is copied by the Mayor of London’s commission for diversity in the public realm.

Our corporate plan is refreshed to ensure equality and fairness is central to everything it does. Along with ensuring that there is a clear definition between structural and systemic racism.

Defining the two helps us appreciate that not all groups are treated the same. Some groups will need more support or focus than others due to the hierarchical nature of society which places certain groups above others.

We announce a groundbreaking new curriculum: Hackney’s Diverse Curriculum – the Black Contribution.

The new nine, six-week lesson plans – developed in partnership with teachers – look at the contributions of Black people across the ages, and can be adapted according to the age or needs of students.

The modules include:

• When I Grow Up (for pupils aged five and under)
• Activism
• British Identity
• Windrush
• Untold Stories
• An Exploration of British History

It also complements our commitment to being an anti-racist borough as outlined in our Black Lives Matter Motion in June 2020.

2022

More than 600 schools from across the world sign up to the curriculum, including in Singapore and Spain.

A new set of teaching resources is created to enable students to learn about the Windrush generations and their contribution to life in Britain, using Veronica Ryan’s sculptures and the work of Thomas J Price as inspiration.

We launch our Anti-racism Plan which sees it leading from the inside out – by looking into how inclusive we are within the council, to how we tackle all forms of racism in our community.

The plan covers five main areas:

• institutional change
• community engagement
• culture and leadership
• accountability
• influence

Within these areas are principles of community collaboration, engagement and empowerment with a cross-generational and intersectional approach.

The plan will reinvigorate our achievements and help us create new ones.

We set in motion a series of actions to better protect residents, and especially children, from harm and racism. It follows the strip search of Child Q, a Black teenage girl, by police officers in a Hackney secondary school.

An investigation found that racism and adultification bias – where Black children are treated more harshly than their white peers – were likely factors in what happened.

This independent review, led by the City and Hackney Safeguarding Children Panel, makes 14 recommendations to ensure children are protected in future – with a focus on Black and Global Majority children.

We are not named in any of the recommendations, but we have been leading many aspects of the response, including:

• ensuring the work by police leads to real change
• responding to the impact of the case on the borough’s Black communities
• making changes to how we think and work as a result of feedback from communities
• putting pressure on the government to make changes in the law to ensure children are better protected

Our work covers five key areas:

Work with police

We:

• lead the development of an action plan – co-produced by the community, us and police – to help rebuild trust in the police service locally.
• lead the revision of how safer schools police officers interact in schools and around police school visits
• issue guidance on police searches in schools
• write to the Deputy Mayor for Policing for a wider London review of the guidance to safer schools police officers

Work with schools

We:

• recruit a Diversity and Inclusion lead to support anti-racism work
• expand adultification training and makes it available to all schools
• work with the school Child Q attended to bring in new leadership and to ensure the school community is fully supported
• support spaces and provides material on talking to and listening to children and staff affected by racism
• facilitate a joint headteacher statement on anti-racism and safeguarding
• ask schools to focus on listening to more pupils and parents from Black and Global Majority backgrounds and ensure stronger anti-racism practices are developed
• oversee the development and use of an inclusion charter, encompassing anti-racism
• focus on capturing the voices and views of children, and in particular Black children, about their schools
• commit to capturing the voices of parents or carers who are most likely to experience a sense of exclusion within schools
• provide racialised trauma support as well as information, drop-in and question and answer sessions
• run induction and refresher training on anti-racism
• promote anti-discriminatory practices with school governors
• distribute information to our secondary schools and colleges that informs young people as to their rights when they are stopped and searched by the police

Work with the community

We hold:

• online sessions for parents, carers and guardians to update them on actions within the education system and have their questions answered by senior leaders
• safe space sessions for young Black girls to speak about their experiences of living and growing up in Hackney, as well as of the education system and the police
• workshops with young people through youth and community settings

Work to change the law

We:

• write to and meet government ministers to discuss the Child Q case and urge them to make changes including an urgent review of policing guidelines and practices around strip searching children, and an urgent review of the law to ensure that no child is strip searched without their parents or guardians being notified

Changing systems

We:

• demand the Met Police self-declare that institutional racism is a consistent factor in the relationship between the police and Black and Global Majority communities
• hold a 4-day anti-racism staff conference to understand the ways in which racial-trauma is entangled with distress and hardship, learn correct ways to treat all communities, change how we work so we’re informed by the lived experiences of all communities

In Hackney we celebrate Black culture and history all year round. As we strive to be an anti-racist borough, it remains important to have focused time to learn, share and celebrate our African and African-Caribbean heritage and culture in Hackney and around the world.

This year’s theme is stories untold. Our children and education services develop the theme after hosting the groundbreaking Anti-racist Conference in May 2022. Inspired by the Warm Shores sculptures outside of Hackney Town Hall, they wanted to center the often silenced, intergenerational stories and voices of Black and Global Majority people.

By celebrating these stories untold, we hope they can continue to unmask, repair and prevent the hidden wounds of racial trauma on Black and the Global Majority children and families in Hackney.

See Casey Review response (google doc)

The appalling strip-search by police of Child Q, within what should have been the safe environment of her school, shocked and distressed people not just within Hackney, but across the whole country. It has traumatised Black and Global Majority communities and individuals across Hackney – and wider. 

Child Q should have been treated with dignity, respect and her interests, as a child, protected. It was clear from the Local Child Safeguarding Practice Review (PDF 511kb) that she was failed by the adults around her that day.

We continue to offer direct support to Child Q and her family, and she remains at the forefront of our thoughts. 

The review into what happened concluded that racism was ‘likely an influencing factor’ in the strip-search; and that Child Q was subjected to ‘adultification’ bias, where Black and Global Majority children are held to adult standards in a way their white peers are less likely to be. 

The independent review by the City and Hackney Safeguarding Children Partnership made recommendations to ensure children are protected in future – with a focus on Black and Global Majority children. While the Council was not named in any of the recommendations, we understand we hold a unique position within the borough, and further, to shape and drive real and meaningful change for our diverse communities. 

That’s why the Council has therefore taken a key leadership role, to ensure that we and partner agencies do all we can to ensure that no other Black or Global Majority child has such an inappropriate and traumatic experience. 

That work covers key areas of activity to deliver our Child Q Action Plan:

• Support for Child Q and her family
• Work in schools, the education system and children’s social care.
• Trust and confidence in the police: activity initiated by the Council to develop and implement a shared plan to improve trust and confidence in the police.
• Community engagement: activity to capture the voices of children, young people, parents/carers and community members to co-produce solutions and to inform new ways of working (policies) within the Council and other organisations.
• Support for our own staff.

This work will ensure that progress by police, and partners – and within the Council itself – leads to the addressing, locally, of racism and bias in all its forms and manifestations; responds to the impact of the Child Q case on communities; and continues to put pressure on the Government to make changes in the law to ensure children are better protected. 

Underpinning all of this, is our work to embed active anti-racism in our own organisation and to support our partners to do the same in the culture of organisations, but that of course depends on their commitment to being anti-racist organisations. 

We have been leading work nationally to fight and counteract racism; and on adultification and anti-racist practice in child safeguarding. However, this work can only succeed with the full commitment of our partners, including the police. 

The Council has formally welcomed plans by the new Met Commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley – in the wake of the Casey Review – to make the radical and necessary changes to the Met Police in order to ensure racism, and other forms of bias, are erased from the force. 

The Council expects this commitment will be an integral part of the force’s evolving response to the Child Q review and the wider issues of adultification bias by some officers. 

We remain committed to working with the Met to make Hackney an exemplar of this new anti-racist approach. But continue to reiterate our calls for the Met to recommit to the definition of institutional racism in the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry (PDF 160kb), and to use that definition to transform the Met into a genuinely anti-racist, inclusive organisation.

Hackney Council remains fully committed to being an actively anti-racist borough. Last year, we launched our Anti Racism Plan which sets out how we will deliver that commitment. It sees us lead from the inside out: from investigating how inclusive we are within the Council to how we tackle all forms of racism in our community. 

We are already leading by example: our Review, Rename Reclaim project which has begun the removal of the names of those involved in the trade of enslaved Africans from our public places – and has since seen our template of community cohesion replicated by the Mayor of London’s Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm. 

We were the first local authority to pass a comprehensive Windrush motion which commits us to fight for the justice of those affected by the Windrush Scandal. 

Our Diverse Curriculum: The Black Contribution – now adopted by thousands of schools worldwide, including in Singapore, Jersey and Spain – confronts the lack of diverse education in our schools and champions Black history as British history. 

Our Improving Outcomes for Young Black men has worked to reduce incidence of young black men experiencing or causing harm within a range of environments as well as work to reduce reoffending; and our Hackney Young Futures Commission and the Youth IAG (Account) continues to campaign for policing by consent and to hold the police responsible for their actions. 

Responding to the Child Q review

Leadership and scrutiny

The Council established a critical incident group, led by the most senior leaders and politicians in the Council, to coordinate our responses to the report and the impacts of the report on Child Q and her family, the community, and Council staff. 

A Strategic Response Group continues to oversee the Council’s response, chaired by the Chief Executive and attended by Mayor Glanville, Deputy Mayor Bramble, Councillor Fajana-Thomas and other key senior officers. 

The Council established a Trust and Confidence in Policing Working Group – involving the community, Council and the police – to work together on five areas: anti-racism; police leadership, culture and practice; collaboration and engagement; disproportionality and community monitoring, including ‘Stop & Search’; and police training. 

The Council established a Community and Stakeholder Engagement Group to talk to and listen to groups of residents affected by the Child Q review, and to inform change.

A special scrutiny meeting, made up of councillors acting independently of the Council, was held. They called on the Council, the Met Police and the Mayor’s policing office to demonstrate and they interrogated what work they had done since the Child Q case was revealed in March. 

A new ‘Diversity and inclusion Systems Leader’ post was established in the Council to oversee and drive change from the top down.

Events, learning and listening to the community, partners and staff

The Council hosted a four-day anti-racist event, attended by hundreds of people from the Council, and other children and family-focussed organisations, aimed to ‘unmask, repair and prevent’ the hidden wounds of racial trauma in order to further and critically develop anti-racist ways of working within the Council and within education settings in Hackney. In response, an action plan is being developed.

Two anti-racist symposiums for schools were held on anti-racism to start or continue the conversation on the issue, on top of multiple school conferences and visits used as forums and touchpoints to develop and share best practice in anti-racism.

Five strands of work to deliver The Child Q Action Plan

The Child Q review made eight findings and 14 recommendations (PDF 511kb). Whilst not named in any of the 14 recommendations, the Council has focused on:

• ensuring partners (police and others) implement the recommendations in order to lead to real change.
• capturing and understanding, from the community, issues around systemic, institutional and other forms of racism and bias so we can make real changes.
• responding to the impact of the Child Q report on communities and staff.
• putting pressure on the Government to make changes in the law to ensure children are better protected in future.

1. Support for Child Q and her family

2. Work in schools, the education system and children’s social care 

Immediate actions 

The Council:

• ensured schools had a framework for conducting searches in schools, pre-empting the national guidance update called for in the review.
• worked with the school Child Q attended to support the school’s transition to new interim leadership and ensure the pupils and the wider school community were fully supported. The school itself received a wide offer of support, including ‘Thinking Spaces’ for pupils, families and staff. Young Hackney and Wellbeing and Mental Health in Schools (WAMHS) were also part of the offer.
• supported spaces and provided material on talking to and listening to children and staff affected by racism, adultification, children’s rights and poverty. Coordinated a statement from Hackney headteachers on anti-racism and safeguarding. The statement recognises that Black and Global Majority children face racism in Hackney and beyond; pledges to taking forward anti-racist practice; and commits to ensuring staff feel confident that their duty to safeguard children comes above any other need.
• briefed school leaders and governors to ensure the findings of the report were widely understood. 

Role of police in schools 

The Council:

• has been leading the review into how safer schools police officers work and act in schools; a local protocol is being developed, with input from schools, police and young people; and agreement has been reached with local police that arrests will not take place on school sites except in exceptional circumstances.
• developed and circulated interim guidance on searches as well as police visits to all schools, and wrote to the Deputy Mayor for Policing for a wider London review of the guidance to safer schools police officers. A decision for any potential strip-search for a child to be escalated to a Detective Inspector for decision making, with a focus upon the immediate safeguarding needs of the child.

Work with secondary schools

The Council:

• urged all secondary schools, most of which are academies not formally accountable to the Council, to work together to better protect students from harm and racism.
• asked schools to focus on listening to more pupils and parents from the Black and Global Majority and to ensure stronger anti-racism practices are being developed.
• is overseeing the development and use of an inclusion charter, encompassing anti-racism, and the development of a role to lead on that.
• convened a secondary headteachers conference in July with a focus on safeguarding, inclusion, anti-racism and early help to prevent exclusions. 

Sustained work on anti-racism 

• The Council has significantly expanded and rolled out adultification training and made it available to all schools.
• An ‘Inclusion Charter’ is being co-produced with schools and others to centre conversations and actions around disproportionality focused on anti-racism and special education needs and disabilities. 

Listening to children

The Council is focussed on capturing the voices and views of children in schools about their schools, emphasising those who do less well or thrive less well, in particular Black children, children entitled to pupil premium grant, and children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). Work is ongoing to promote the use of the child’s voice in and by every school – and to continue to capture children’s voices. 

Children have increased awareness of their rights in respect of police stop and search powers.

A Young Governors programme was piloted, with 14 young governors formally co-opted onto boards. They participate in training, supporting development of parent surveys, and attending pupil disciplinary committees.

Listening to parents/carers 

The Council committed to also capturing the voices of parents/carers who are most likely to experience a sense of exclusion within the school system. This will help ensure these parents are better supported by the education system. 

Schools and staffing

The Council has been providing: 

• racialised trauma support as well as information, drop-in and Q&A sessions.
• induction and refresher training on anti-racism.

Promoting anti-discriminatory practices with school governors 

A range of work is underway, including to:

• diversify governing boards and expand the young governor initiative, focusing on Black and Global Majority recruits.
• strengthen training for school governors on safeguarding.
• refine school exclusions training for governors, jointly with young people.
• develop or strengthen anti-racism or safeguarding training for governors.
• train senior school leaders and governors on ‘adultification’.
• ensure pupil and parent voices are included in governors’ key decisions. 

Tackling disproportionality

The Council has been working to: 

• reduce the number of children kept in custody overnight
• reduce the number of Black children who are charged and sentenced for lower level offences, with prevention and support offered as an alternative.
• reduce the number of children who are excluded from school. 

3. Trust and confidence in the police 

Immediate actions 

The Council wrote to the highest-serving Met Police officer, urging him to work with us to create a shared action plan, co-produced by community partners, to help rebuild trust in the service and bring about meaningful change in policing locally.

Shared Police Action Plan 

The Council:

• set up a Police Action Plan Board in order to drive the creation of this plan.
• held a series of insight workshops with local communities to understand current levels of trust and confidence in policing and to address community concerns. These workshops also involved organisations and residents who did not want to engage with the police directly.
• collaborated with 40 community groups to co-produce an action plan that drives improvement in police leadership and culture, anti-racist practice, proactive community engagement, transparent community scrutiny and innovative anti-racist training
• has been working with Mopac (The Mayor’s Office for Policing And Crime) on the development of the action plan to ensure that it aligns with the London wide action plan.

Trust and Confidence in Policing Working Group

The group has:

• increased communication between the police and youth organisations across the borough, including youth-led partnership events with police Safer Neighbourhood Teams.
• developed a ‘know your rights’ leaflet and website, in conjunction with Young Hackney to be shared with all young people who are stopped and searched.
• extended Youth Scrutiny Panels across Hackney, where the police listen to feedback from Hackney young people and commit to the improvements and innovations they raise
• set up community-led conversations, for parents and wider residents to meet regularly with senior police leaders, to share their concerns and develop collaborative local solutions
• partnered with other local authorities to learn from their successful anti-racist training and ways of working.

The group is in the process of:

• setting up a restorative justice pilot scheme to enable young people to share negative experiences of ‘stop and search’ with the Council and police officers.
• increasing the number of Youth Scrutiny Panels, ensuring these take place in partnership with different youth organisations across the borough to reach a larger number of young people.
• expanding Trading Places, led by The Crib Youth Project, where young people and police officers ‘trade places’ in role play to build increased understanding for police officers of the experience of young people and to enable young people to better understand their rights

Longer-term 

The new Police Commander for Hackney, James Conway, will be visiting youth groups across the borough, including Hackney Youth Parliament and Hackney Young Futures, to hear directly from young people the changes they want to see in the next three years.

Hackney will be one of the first local authorities in London to trial the new Mopac local scrutiny scheme, with police, Council, community and Mopac working together to build a more representative Community Monitoring Group in the borough.

The Council is developing an innovative police and partnership training proposal – focused on anti-racism, adultification, cultural awareness, trauma awareness and unconscious bias.

4. Community Engagement

The Community and Stakeholder Engagement Group, established by the Council, has been talking to the community, children and young people. 

These included:

• 15 Trust and Confidence in Policing co-production sessions with 40 voluntary and community organisations and residents
• safe space sessions for young Black girls to speak about their experiences of living and growing up in Hackney, as well as of the education system and the police.
• 4 workshops with young people through youth and community settings. 

Issues raised and insight gathered from residents through these conversations will inform changes in how institutional racism, and trust and confidence issues, are addressed in the Council, within schools and in policing; and fed into the Council’s evolving Anti-Racist Action Plan.

5. Support for Council staff and future staff 

The Council:

• set up a series of peer support groups for Black and Global Majority staff focusing on the triggering impact of racialised trauma, alongside broader support for all staff affected.
• launched a set of ‘anti-racist practice standards’ within the Education and Children Directorate, which commits to ‘eradicating systemic racism, discrimination, injustice, making anti-racism a foundation of our practice’, with a roadshow underway to embed these across services.
• developed and embedded the Inclusive Recruitment protocol, ensuring that shortlisting and interview panels are diverse and include Black or Global Majority panel members.
• held a groundbreaking praxis conference

Monitoring the impact of our work with partners

Whilst we recognise that the fundamental change that we want to see will take time, we want to ensure that we measure whether our work is building the impact that we want to see. That is why we and our partners are looking build performance measures and targets that will enable us to track progress and keep our actions under review.

See our response to the Casey review (google doc).

See our response to the De souza report (google doc).