Midlands Equalities Forum Action Points/Notes of Meeting held 21st July 2014 Venue – Severnside Housing, Brassey Road, Old Potts Way, Shrewsbury, SY3 7FA Present: Jin Takhar Andrew Petrie Jo Patel Susan Dell Gillian Kirkman Vincent Bryce Robert Murray Steven Simpson Claire Bonnet Frankie Stevens Lisa Brett Sarah Carrington Paula Nicholls Wolverhampton Homes (Chair) Housing Diversity Network Wolverhampton Homes Severnside Housing Affinity Sutton Nottingham City Homes Dudley Council Harborne Parish Lands Charity Midland Heart Stonewall Bromford Group Bromford Group Black Country Housing Group Apologies: Saima Farooq - Waterloo Housing Group Wendy Powell – Caldmore Accord Housing Association Kashmir Randhawa – Sandwell Homes Gill Cook – Housing Diversity Network Saroj Norman – Dudley Council Hyacinth Austin - Walsall Housing Group Vickie Bailey – Orbit Housing Group Wendy Hambidge – Places for People David Moss – Sanctuary Housing Denise Maguire - Harborne Parish Lands Charity Shay Withnall – Black Country Housing Group Kate Warburton – National Housing Federation Janet Rixon - Worcester Community Housing Page 1 of 4 Notes 1. Welcome, Apologies and Minutes of last meeting Jin Takhar, Chair opened the meeting by welcoming members. Apologies received were noted and the minutes of the previous meeting were accepted. 2. Organisational Updates Unfortunately the speaker from the NHF was unable to attend due to illness. Individuals were asked to provide an update on the work they were currently involved in at their organisation. Wolverhampton Homes: Asked about whether anyone had seen an increase in domestic violence. Severnside not seen an increase. Wolverhampton homes seen an increase in financial abuse due to financial hardship – increase due to welfare reform. Bromford - seen increase in cannabis factories. Tenants (often single mums) don’t feel they have a choice. Wolverhampton Homes research – increase support pre-tenancy and post tenancy. Introduce advocates and understand reasons for debt. Black African Caribbean men. Severnside – relatively high proportion of young people tenancies failing. Midland Heart: Training staff on speaking out about inappropriate comments. Will follow up to see if it has been effective. Working with schools about Birmingham Bacculaureate. Black Country Housing Group: - EDI training - Run a confidential helpline - Local authorities finances are a challenge. Dudley Council: - Need to develop a financial inclusion strategy and digital inclusion strategy - Questions around the quality of customer profile data - Benefit cap – small number (less than 100) but arrears increasing significantly - DHP masking some of the problems Harborne Parish Lands: - Grant making – seeing grant requests for repairs from individuals Page 2 of 4 Action for council stock Affinity Sutton: - Mentoring residents - Redoing BME mentoring programme internally - Youth ambassadors – national scheme - Unconscious bias training for involved residents Bromford: - Bromford Deal - New tenants classified as red, amber or green Wolverhampton Homes: - Increase in domestic violence cases - Providing sexual orientation training - Customer profiling - Workforce representation – addressing gaps in representation - Hoarding – what good practice is out there? Find it is often anxiety triggered. Nottingham City Homes: - Eyes wide open initiative – staff flag issues such as hoarding - Polish community – signpost to success - BME Survey - Equality panel – panel assessed against SHEF, happy to share learning - Straight Allies Initiative - Positive Action Programme - Audio CDs for Training Severnside: - Training for all staff - Also, got tenant Central in to do training - Financial and Digital Inclusion – fall’s under Sue’s remit - Seeing increase in Eastern European communities. So support available, set up support group for families (to run themselves) 3. Stonewall Frankie Steven from Stonewall provided an overview of their Workplace Equality Index and Diversity Champions initiatives. One issue raised in the discussion was about dealing with homophobia in sheltered accommodation. 4. HDN Update AP explained the HDN and CIH have a joint E&D conference each year. It will be held on 14th October in London this year. The broad theme is ‘where next for E&D’. Page 3 of 4 6. Agenda items were discussed for next and future meetings: - 7. Allocation Policies Digital Inclusion Strategies Social Value and Social Return on Investment – focus on this for next meeting Impact of Welfare Reforms, generally but particularly on disadvantaged groups – eg BME families living in larger properties; (from previous minutes) Domestic Abuse, in particular how Welfare Reform changes will be dealt with when someone needs to move out of their existing home. Date of next meeting: 30th September 2014 Page 4 of 4
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