Memorandum by the West London Community
Cohesion Pathfinder (SOC 72)
1. INTRODUCTION
AND BACKGROUND
This memorandum provides a West London perspective
on community cohesion, the rationale behind this and a summary
of the work and future plans of the West London Pathfinder.
1.1 Background
Some 1.4 million people live in West London,
almost of the total population of London as a whole. Across West
London at least 30% of the population were born outside the UK.
This statistic masks a myriad of smaller areas where levels of
BME and BMER residency are as high or higher than those of inner
London and one borough where already the ethnic minority has become
the majority. Forty eight per cent of the children in primary
schools in West London are from a BME background. However London
differs from other parts of the UK in that it has absorbed the
constant arrival of new migrants from different continents and
cultures over several decades. For the most part the whole range
of public sector organisations and host communities have developed
an effective management response and a positive track record to
deal with both the short term and longer terms issues that have
arisen from this situation. The arrival of the migrants has for
the most part provided the subregion with an increasing pool of
a wide range of skilled labour and because of the availability
of jobs can be linked by a virtuous circle to the building of
a largely prosperous subregion. A good example of this are the
42 refugee doctors, Refugees into Jobs has now helped into work
in both primary care and other health trusts.
1.2 The migrants' arrival over several decades
has also provided the local authorities and other public sector
organisations with the chance to develop links with a wide range
and number of community organisations, faith and refugee groups
and encourage and celebrate the diversity of each of the different
cultures. This is particularly evident in the festivals that are
often hosted by the local authorities working in close partnership
with community and faith organisations. Over the last 10 years
refugee and asylum figures have increased due largely to our proximity
to Heathrow. But there are far larger numbers of migrants in the
area from both Southern Asia and the Carribbean, who have come
in the main to join other family members already here and because
of the good work prospects.
1.3 Unlike areas in the North of England
there has not been any major residential segregation in the sense
that whole estates, schools and areas have not become mono-cultural.
1.4 We do have our own issues to address:
friction between the Somalis and the Asian population in some
areas and between Afro Caribbean communities and Somalis in others.
Intransigent barriers to employment and discrete employment discrimination
exists for many of the long-term unemployed particularly refugees.
There is also intergenerational conflict within both white and
black communities. There are groups of disenfranchised young white
men who could fall prey to the influence of the BNP in particular
parts of West London. There is also the highly publicised rise
in gun crime. Because of these issues we cannot afford to be complacent
so we also need to use the Pathfinder to act as the catalyst for
working with other stakeholders and together to build the systems
and policies and try out demonstration projects which will in
turn provide activities and action to address this wide range
of issues.
1.5 In the past there has been conflict
at times: there were serious disturbances in Southall for example
in the late 1970's and early 1980's However since then a much
more positive track record of successfully absorbing new communities
across West London has developed. Acknowledgement that there are
areas in Britain where this has happened seemed to be missing
from the national debate on diversity and community cohesion.
The West London Pathfinder is pleased to have the opportunity
to discuss this vantage point, particularly from a local authority
perspective.
2. THE WEST
LONDON PATHFINDER
The Pathfinder is one of 14 National Pathfinders.
We are proud to have been chosen as one of only two in London.
We are also one of only two nationally which include a group of
local authorities. As a reminder the Pathfinders role is to explore
the most effective means of addressing community cohesion.
The West London Pathfinder has three theme groups:
Theme group 1: Communication, information
and dissemination
Theme group 2: Public sector meeting the challenge
of community cohesion
Theme group 3: Voluntary sector, youth and
community development.
The Pathfinder was officially launched in mid
July 2003. Mangement and Delivery of the Pathfinder is shared
by the local authorities and the voluntary sector.
2.1 The Pathfinder aims as well as providing
a range of practical projects to address community cohesion in
a variety of ways but to also lead by example and encourage and
enable a community cohesion ethos to be adopted by both our own
and our stakeholders' organisations' policymakers in the public,
private and voluntary and community sectors. The remainder of
the report will provide an insight to the wide range of work of
the three theme groups. Much of the early work of the Pathfinder
has been about identifying existing community cohesion good practice
operating at community level and within local authorities.
2.2 Theme group 1: Communication, information
and dissemination
The Pathfinder and the Trinity Mirror Group
(TMG owns 83 local papers)Ted Cantle's original report on community
cohesion and the later LGA guidance acknowledges the influential
role the media has in both encouraging and discouraging social
cohesion. Through the Pathfinder TMG are developing a range of
activities to encourage social cohesion; these include a educational
projects and a bursary scheme. Through the Pathfinder we also
brought together representatives from; Refugee forums, Race Equality
Councils, local authority public relations staff, and a representative
from the public relations unit at New Scotland Yard. All had reason
to take exception at the handling of some local news coverage.
We were joined by senior Trinity Mirror editorial staff. By the
end of the seminar all jointly acknowledged:
The power of positive news to both dispel myths
and also to increase readership but the difficulties reporters
faced in working to tight timelines in not being able to easily
"put into context" some BME and BMER focussed news items.
The short term positive outputs from this was
to:
(1) Encourage the building of proactive links
between refugees forums and their corresponding TMG editorial
teams.
(2) Hold a briefing for young editorial staff
on community cohesion and the press's powerful role in stablising
or destablising a situation. We are encouraging the Trinity Mirror
Group to make this briefing a part of all new editorial staff's
induction and ongoing professional development and training.
2.3 Comment: The briefing itself
reminded those involved in giving it of the difficulties of encouraging
a change in working practices, even if this is lead from the top,
as this session was, unless those concerned can acknowledge that
there is anything wrong in their current working practices. Journalists'
comments came with the automatic reactive response that any changes
impinge on the "freedom of the press." Showing the reporters
the business benefits from the TMGs' viewpoint did encourage them
to take on board the community cohesion agenda, but none of this
is helped by the fact that in general community cohesion as a
term is little known or understood. Even when carefully explained
it was still difficult to counteract the challenge that this is
what "we have been doing successfully already" with
the press coverage given to Eid, Diwali etc. Nor is it helped
by the poor image newspaper reporters have of local authorities.
We hope that by pursuing this aspect through having it made a
part of a formal training module that eventually the "community
cohesion" message will be a part of our local journalists'
toolkit.
2.4 Other work in Theme Group One includes
setting up a local officer group to spearhead a communications
and dissemination plan. With hindsight development of this needed
to start before the Pathfinder got underway, in order to increase
understanding of the term community cohesion, and so engagement
in the Pathfinder. This is one of the reasons the Pathfinder has
not adopted a more catchy branding name but instead all documentation
is under the banner of "Community Cohesion in West London"
to encourage wider acceptance and recognition of the term. Promotion
of the term by the Home Office and other appropriate government
departments has been missing, unlike the heavy publicity which
was given to the birth of the term "social exclusion."
2.5 "Community and the media"
is the title of a series of related pieces of research building
on community organisations' current perceptions and experience
of the media aiming to use training and a resource pack to develop
the media skills of BMER groups. This should help to support better
informed reporting by the mainstream media and get wider promotion
of the positive work community groups are involved in and so help
to dispel myths and misconceptions. In carrying out the research
26 community media organisations were identified who between them
have an audience of over 400,000 listeners and readers. Developing
these media contacts will help local authorities to make contacts
with some of our more marginalised communities. Communities served
by these organisations included: Albanian, Somalian, Turkish,
Bangali and Arabic, but also included those who were serving second
generation migrants eg British born Asian Radio.
2.6 The original Pathfinder plan included
development of a community cohesion portal. The feasibility study,
has shown that this is not what is needed. Surprisingly despite
the huge amount of ICT training available for individuals the
research showed that the very BME and BMER groups who we had hoped
would use such a site, were generally not ITC literate in fact
there were examples given of groups who had been given computers
which still remained in boxes, as the owners did not know how
to put the kit together. Funding will instead be given to an outreach
ITC worker who will work with the groups to increase their skills
and build their capacity.
2.7 Piloting of a high level secure information
alert system will also start shortly which will use an ICT system
to enable local authority chief executives, police, fire brigade
and it is hoped PCTs to provide an immediacy to subregional communications,
which will be useful in emergency situations as well as incidents
of community tension.
3. Theme group 2: Public sector meeting
the challenge of community cohesion. A series of sub regional
working groups have been set up looking at incorporating community
cohesion into their policies and practices and so making sure
the work of the Pathfinder is sustained or at the least it's work
influences the West London agenda well beyond the lifetime of
the Pathfinder. These include a Local Strategic Partnership grouping
(LSP) currently mapping when and how community cohesion can be
incorporated into their work and so influence the policies of
each member of each LSP.
3.1 Regeneration officers are working together
identifying the factors which contribute to best practice in local
employment projects with the aim of using this to influence practice
in the private, public and voluntary sector.
3.2 A grouping of the six Crime Disorder
and Reduction Partnerships are seeking to involve the police in
establishing ways of sharing information and improving communication
across the sub region.
3.3 A group of senior housing officers are
currently using the Chartered Institute of Housing's paper Offering
Communities Real Choice—Lettings and Community Cohesion
against which to assess their work and from this establish what
gaps or changes need to be incorporated into their work to ensure
that community cohesion is actively being addressed.
3.4 A series of events, entitled "What
Works" have been used to both promote and drive the Pathfinder
forward. The next one in March will focus on the work being done
by the groups within Theme group 2, encouraging wider partner
buy in, testing our findings and ensuring we are inclusive in
all our work.
3.5 This theme group has also taken the
lead in engaging a wider partnership in our work through the Strategic
Steering Group. The group includes high level representatives
from: the police, fire brigade, Connexions, the LSC, PCTs, Race
Equality Councils and Refugee Forums as well as the other Local
Authorities and our lead partners from West London Network. So
the work of the Pathfinder is aiming to act as a catalyst to encourage
honest debate on community cohesion and ensure that its' ethos
is built into our and our partners' policies and practices. We
have all learnt in recent years that building partnerships takes
some considerable time and the short time period covered by the
Pathfinder is a concern. It is hoped that this is one of several
groupings which will continue to meet after the Pathfinder finishes.
3.6 The London Borough of Hounslow have
provided us with a role model, having recently launched their
high profile document detailing the impact of community cohesion
across all its directorates "Community Cohesion in Hounslow—Meeting
the Challenge." The launch event provided us with the opportunity
to also encourage members to take on the mantle of local leadership
in community cohesion. This seminar was lead by the I&DeA
and we intend to refine this and repeat the session within each
borough, with an all party group of members and involving equality
and diversity officers. The output of each workshop will be a
signed action plan illustrating each borough's short-term and
long-term priorities for addressing community cohesion.
3.7 From the outset the WLCCP have been
concerned to engage the Greater London Authority (GLA) in the
debate on community cohesion, particularly as the GLA also incorporates
the strategic management of the London Fire Brigade and the Metropolitan
police. Despite a strong commitment to diversity and equalities
across all its programmes community cohesion is not explicitly
addressed. A series of communications have taken place between
our local authority chief executives and the GLA which have now
resulted in joint working on the production of a high profile
publication. This will acknowledge all the existing good practice
work on community cohesion being delivered by ourselves and our
partners. It will be launched by the Mayor this spring.
4. Theme group 3: Voluntary sector,
youth and community development.
Last summer this group oversaw the development
of a major piece of research into existing good practice at community
level. The final report includes over 50 case studies. These included
the work of faith groups, people with special needs, lone parents,
and both groups for the young and the old across the subregion.
The researcher, like all the others involved in work carried out
early in the programme, needed to spend time explaining what community
cohesion is in order to help groups identify examples of good
practice. The initial work was followed up with a series of focus
sessions testing out assumptions and ideas that had come from
interviews with individual groups. Participants told us that a
successful community cohesion project needed to establish: a common
purpose, look outwards, take pride is what it is doing, develop
pride in the neighbourhood and build partnerships with statutory
organisations. It should also seek to remove stigma be it race,
disability or religion and encourage people from diverse backgrounds
to work together. Examples included an Albanian organisation making
contact with a Somalian group, a Kenyan group developing links
with local health providers to enhance the service they were providing
to their members and a well developed refugee community organisation
which has expanded to build links with the private sector to enable
refugees to move into employment.
4.1 Theme Group 3 are now engage in developing
a range of demonstration projects which includes work in schools
and community organisations making connections with literature
festivals and local museums to build a mobile exhibition that
focuses on celebrating food. Schools and children will also be
involved in becoming budding young journalists working with their
local newspapers on a community cohesion theme plus a list of
other ideas still in their embryonic stage. It is hoped that a
major urban music project will be set up to capitalise on young
people's interest in world music, this will be accompanied by
a major football festival involving five FA clubs (in itself a
good example of community cohesion.) Both will provide major opportunities
to engage young white and black young people in the work of the
Pathfinder. We hope to contrast these projects with a pilot project
for groups of young white people working directly on reducing
prejudice and handling conflict in day to day situations in targeted
areas which we expect to include Hayes, West Drayton and Feltham.
4.2 This theme group also covers aspects
of good old fashioned community empowerment with the Young Community
Champions work and Common Purpose, providing would be community
leaders with the skills and contacts to work with and across all
sectors in the subregion. The idea of empowerment is followed
through with the development of the Community Advisory Forum building
the skills and capacity of groups to take part in partnership
work and eventually advise the statutory sector on matters of
community cohesion.
5. Conclusions: Lessons learnt
Local authorities and our partners have for
many years been delivering successful community cohesion projects,
but they have not been badged as such, as the term itself is new.
Because of West London's history of immigration this has been
happening more successfully in West London than in some other
parts of the UK.
5.1 However we are learning that:
— Not all of our partners have the
systems to operate easily at a subregional level which has made
our work more challenging. eg the police. This is turn means that
there is still a lot of work to be done on establishing how we
actively monitor community tension.
— A subregional strategic programme
can only be effective and have credibility if accompanied by local
delivery.
— Partnership building takes time—we
need to maintain effective communication and engagement across
a wide number of organisations.
— The Pathfinders are seen as a short
term programme to kick start community cohesion, but by measuring
successful community cohesion through the next Comprehensive Performance
Review, CPA the government has demonstrated the importance it
is attaching to this work. This fact is in itself helping to mobilise
partners.
— Local authorities have a key role
as "community leaders" but may be seen by some parts
of the general public as not the most likely delivery agency to
choose in what in reality needs to be a campaign to change hearts
and minds.
— Within the confines of a short timescale
the voluntary and community sector have proved highly flexible
and efficient deliverers.
— Local authorities need to use effective
communication tools internally and externally to create greater
recognition of the term and an understanding of community cohesion.
Progress would have been helped by an earlier linked government
backed national publicity campaign. This would also have encouraged
community leaders to champion community cohesion so that it would
be seen not just an institutional response.
— The nebulous nature of the concept
of community cohesion makes it difficult to explain in a "snappy
way." Community Cohesion needs a national campaign behind
it to encourage all of the importance of building it into policies
across all sectors both:
— as a new proactive aspect of
race equality and diversity policies, which is encouraged by the
Race Relations Amendment Act (2002);
— but also to help all of us to
actively develop the networks, skills, and experience to explode
myths, build relationships and so reduce implicit and explicit
prejudice and resentment in all its forms, in order to stabilise
communities and make equality of opportunity a reality for all
and not just a paper exercise.
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