Equality, Diverse Communities & Human Rights
The world of equality, diversity and human rights is a complex and at times conflicting one. In the last ten years we have witnessed legal changes which a generation ago would have been unimaginable. Yet in spite of a legal framework which has been in place for over 35 years the UK still has significant areas of persistent inequalities and discrimination.
Here at ECOTEC we have significant experience of working with a range of clients in helping them to make sense of the complexities of equalities and its ever changing legal framework.
We recognize from the onset the difficult and challenging political, social and legal contexts in which our clients operate within and our aim with each of our assignments is to support our clients on their own individual equalities journey.
Above all else we see the equalities, diversity and Human Rights agenda as a positive one. If in the past the approach to equalities focused significantly on preventing discrimination we recognize that in the future it will focus more on enabling all individuals to realize his or her potential.
ECOTEC can help you:
- Comply with legal and policy requirements, and diversify your service users;
- Develop your equality policy and an action plan;
- Carry out equality reviews across the organisation, tell you how you are doing, and where change needs to take place;
- Monitor and analyse to benchmark your performance against local and national targets;
- Produce practical guidance materials;
- Improve the delivery of services to diverse clients;
- Developing community cohesion strategies;
- Develop community engagement strategies.
demetrious.panton@ecotec.com
+44 (0) 207 921 3829
Case Study: Helping develop an equalities action plan to improve lives in an inner city community
ECOTEC was commissioned to gather information to help refresh the equalities action plan for the Kings Norton New Deal for Communities (NDC) programme. NDC is a government-funded initiative set up to tackle deprivation in some of the UK’s poorest neighbourhoods. It has operated on the 3 estates of Kings Norton, an inner city area of Birmingham, since 1999.
Our work involved engaging with Kings Norton residents to get their views on what it’s like to be part of the 3 estates community and to find out how the New Deal for Communities activities have affected them so far.
In particular the client was interested in the experiences of non-white groups and their level of community integration and involvement. The purpose here was also to provide the Kings Norton NDC team with a robust baseline to allow year on year trend analysis on any progress made in terms of community cohesion.
We were also tasked to find out if people’s sexuality affected their experience of living in the community and to get a detailed picture of the experiences of ex-offenders living on the 3 estates.
The methodology involved a desk based review of existing data and an on-street survey with residents. We also conducted interviews and focus groups with ex-offenders and with stakeholders representing members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities.
