New Era, New Service

At its last meeting in October the Consortium of Black Groups unanimously voted in favour of basing the Race Equality and Human Rights Service within the Black Development Agency. The COBG meeting held the view that the BDA had fought long and hard for the REHRS to become a reality and that it was the most suitable institutional setting for the REHRS in its infancy, as the BDA is mandatedby the BME communities and their representatives to ensure that the Service develops in accordance with the aspirations of the affected people.

In 2005 after 40 years, the Bristol Race Equality Council (BREC) finally and officially ceased to exist as an organisation. In the wake of its extinction, a group of key players from the Black Development Agency (BDA), Support Against Racist Incidents (SARI), Avon and Bristol Law Centre and Bristol City Council (BCC) the Primary Care Trust (PCT) and a number of other key local organisations formed a steering group to look at how they could make up for the lack of adequate representation on race issues. In the process they prepared for the emergence of a Race Equality Service, rooted and grounded in the experience and expertise of the groups most marginalised. In the course of planning, that developed into a vision for a fully fledged Race Equality and Human Rights Service (REHRS). The new service became fully effective on October 1st this year.

Its development is being complimented on a national level by the creation of the new Commission for Equality and Human Rights (EHRC). It will provide the space to promote and deliver the Equalities Act. The Act requires organisations to focus on a more coherent framework of action to deliver equality for marginalised groups and individuals.

The strategic priority of the newly formed REHRS is to promote equality in service delivery throughout Bristol and South Gloucestershire. It must become the champion of race equality or it must become nothing at all. It must monitor and ensure that the statutorybodies fulfil their duty to promote equality. It must lead the city in pursuit of a comprehensive vision of justice that will create the conditions necessary for Bristol to overcome the race and class based fractures that characterise everyday life.

And so the REHRS aims to become the champion of equality on all fronts: social, economic, political, physical and legal and across all the equality strands. Its aims to take up the interests of all exploited and underrepresented groups, be they long term or newly arrived residents. Because, as a whole, minority ethnic groups continue to occupy the least favourable position within the labour market, education, health, housing and the criminal justice system.

The REHRS will work with public sector bodies toensure that their policies, procedures and practises do not discriminate, but instead include and empower these communities. It must constantly be looking todevelop into an organisation that can work effectively with the private sector and tackle the institutional processes that often output inequality beyond the decisions of any particular individual.

The REHRS will have to take account of changingdemographics, advance the representation of BMEpeople at all levels in local organisations and promoteequality of opportunity and the sharing of power. Theremoval of racial barriers implies closing the gap inevery service area to ensure equality of outcomes,including health services, housing and educationthrough cross-sector intervention. It must seek the equaldistribution of local government funding and resourcesif the needs of diverse communities are to be met.

The REHRS must develop an appropriate structure by 2008; establish an advice and casework service; undertake the monitoring of public sector bodies’ race equality policies and scrutinise the public sector to ensure compliance with the duty to promote race equality. The initial focus will be to build the capacity of the Service during the first year. An inclusive approach should be reflected in the organisation’scommunications channels to allow for the flow of information to relevant bodies.

The lack of reliable and coherent data on the situation facing Bristol and South Gloucestershire’s Black Minority Ethnic communities will pose a challenge of the first order for the new service. Thus at the top of the list of priorities for the REHRS will be tocoordinate the necessary research and the compilation of evidence from all relevant sources. This is essential if it is to understand the context and secure justice for the victims of unlawful discrimination and use the evidence to reshape current and direct future policy.

The Service resolves to:

• Enable people to access services which takeinto account the needs of diverse communities, including all equality strands not just racial or ethnic groupings;
• Promote the integration of communities to
• overcome isolation and to manage and resolve
• potential conflict and inter-racial tensions;
• Undertake legal, political and social action to
• address issues of powerlessness, to seek access to
• power and open channels of communication and
• representation to strengthen the cause of race
• equality.