A cultural polarisation over attitudes to immigration, according to the authors of the new British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey chapter on immigration published today, could generate long-term political headaches for politicians who adopt a tough anti-immigration agenda in search of public support.

‘Responding to the concerns of voters worried about immigration today risks alienating the rising sections of the electorate whose political voice will become steadily louder in elections to come’, say authors Anthony Heath and Rob Ford. Their BSA report shows that levels of education are a strong predictor of attitudes towards immigration, with an especially stark polarisation between the attitudes of graduates and those with no qualifications. Sixty per cent of those with a degree believe that immigration is beneficial for the economy, and another 16 per cent see it as having neutral impacts, leaving just 22% of graduates who believe that the economic impacts of immigration are negative.

Yet this three-to-one margin in favour of the economic benefits of migration among graduates is reversed among Britons who left school with no educational qualifications: where 61 per cent believe that the impact is negative, 21% see it as neutral, and just 16 per cent believe that the economic benefits are positive.

The political dilemma, according to academics Anthony Heath and Rob Ford, co-authors of the BSA study, arises from how short-term and longer-term political pressures pull in opposite directions.

“Although UKIP competition creates a short-term demand for restrictive migration policies, such policies may cause problems in the longer run. Advocating strongly restrictive immigration policies risks alienating the more liberal third of the population – and given constraints on policy and high political distrust, may not convince the most anti-immigration voters anyway. Moreover, long-term demographic change is moving society in the opposite direction, because the most pro-migration social groups – university graduates and professionals – are steadily growing while the most anti-migrant groups – unskilled  manual workers and those with no qualifications – are in sharp decline,” the authors write.

They note that, in 1989, just 7 per cent of BSA respondents were graduates, while 44 per cent had no qualifications. Now graduates (25 per cent) outnumber those without any qualifications (20 per cent), according to the BSA study. It also reports that those whose parents were migrants to Britain see both the cultural and economic impacts of migration as positive, as do Londoners.

The challenge to business

If the BSA study presents dilemmas for politicians, it presents a significant challenge for business advocates of the economic benefits of migration too. The BSA survey presents clear evidence that graduates have been convinced, while those who didn’t go to university have not, leaving the public as a whole sceptical that migration will have a net benefit to Britain’s economy.

Yet both the content and style of economic advocacy about migration – which often focuses on the factual evidence about positive net contributions – remains pitched primarily to the more elite, educated audience which is already onside. A focus on the arguments and messengers who could connect with those who didn’t go to university –engaging their concerns about migration constructively – will be important if business advocates want to preach beyond the converted, and to seek majority public support.

Joining the club

BSA respondents were also asked how long it should be before migrants have full and equal access to the same welfare rights as British citizens. Most people believe that citizenship is a ‘club’ and that people need to earn entitlements to it. But the BSA findings show that the majority are pragmatic about how this works in practice: only a fairly small niche take a highly restrictive view.
One per cent say that migrants should ‘never’ have the same access to welfare as British citizens. Only a minority of around a quarter believe that the qualifying period for full welfare access should be five years or more. (18 per cent proposed a five-year wait for EU migrants, and 25 per cent proposed that this would be the right approach for non-EU migrants).

Around one in four (37 per cent) of respondents believe EU migrants should have full and equal access immediately (14 per cent) or after one year (23 per cent). In the BSA findings, most people would see two to three years as fair. Citizenship usually takes five years from those outside the EU, but EU membership constrains governments from discriminating between EU citizens.

This belief, that the willingness to contribute is important, goes with another feature of ‘fair play’ – which is that those who do contribute and play by the rules have to be accepted as fully and equal members of the club.

Lack of knowledge

Public attitudes may not always prove highly responsive to policy changes on immigration, where there is a lack of public knowledge, or low trust about policy. Respondents to the BSA survey were asked whether it was true that ‘there is a limit on the number of work permits the government issues each year to migrants to Britain coming from outside the EU who want to come and work in Britain. Most of these permits are reserved for those with better qualifications and English language skills’.

Forty-five per cent knew this was true, but 42 per cent thought it was false, while 14% didn’t know. Those who were most sceptical about immigration were more likely to give an incorrect answer about work permits.

Contact matters

The BSA report also shows that contact with migrants is associated with more positive, rather than negative views, about the impacts of immigration. ‘While socially marginal groups worry the most about the impact of immigration, those most likely to be directly exposed to migration in their daily lives have much more positive views. Londoners, those with migrant heritage and those with migrant friends (all of whom are more likely to have regular direct contact with migrants) have more positive than negative views about immigration’s effects. The most intensely negative views are found among the oldest voters, and those with no migrant friends’, Heath and Ford conclude.

Reaching the pragmatic middle

The challenge for those who seek to make the positive case for immigration – whether they are political parties, business interests, migrants’ rights advocates or universities seeking continuing openness to international students – is to reach beyond these groups who already agree with them and engage the ‘pragmatic middle’ that the BSA survey identifies.

A rejectionist rump would pull up the drawbridge tomorrow. They are unlikely to ever engage with any argument that would still hold some appeal to the growing group who hold liberal attitudes already. Many have found their political home with UKIP, though it remains to be seen how many will stick with Nigel Farage right through to May 2015’s general election.

The BSA survey echoes existing analysis of public attitudes on immigration. This identifies, sitting between the liberals and rejectionists, a ‘pragmatic middle’ who have reasonable anxieties about the pace of change in Britain and what this means both economically and culturally, but who acknowledge that pulling up the drawbridge is not the answer. It is this group who will accept that migrants can ‘join the club’ and be ‘one of us’ – including accessing the British welfare system – but only if they first show their willingness to play by it’s rules: working hard and paying taxes, learning English and joining in with the community.

It’s this group that politicians and others need to engage. Like others, they have had enough of ‘tough’ promises that can’t be kept. As the issue of immigration becomes increasingly salient in the lead-up to May 2015, they will listen to those who make a pragmatic offer on immigration, one that acknowledges and engages their worries but which is both principled and achievable.

This blog was posted initially on the British Future website. 

Founded in April 2013, Citizens UK: Birmingham – a chapter of Citizens UK – is our city’s largest civil society alliance of faith, education, trade union and community groups, committed to training and applying the craft of community organising.

Last summer, we launched a ‘citizen’s listening campaign’ when teams of leaders in each community had thousands of face to face conversations. We heard the real life stories of the people of our city. We built relationships and we built collective power.  Then in October over 200 of us came together to turn these stories into a common social justice agenda and recruit leaders onto action teams. We have 5 specific areas of work: living wage, mental health, jobs, benefit payment delays and public safety. Five action teams have been working hard over the last 6 months to impact change.

On the evening of Wednesday 14 May, 429 citizens from across our membership and diverse communities gathered to do some business at our Public Accountability Assembly. We put our priorities to the decision-making powers in Birmingham. This was not a hustings or an elections debate. We assembled to seek public commitments to our specific social justice agenda.  Our approach is simple and effective.  We believe that ‘90% of an action is turn out’, mobilising hundreds of people from across our alliance to attend. The buzz and energy in the room with so many people added to the sense of unity and reinforced what a milestone the evening was.

Every proposal was preceded by a moving testimony by a person affected by the issue. They were people speaking publicly for the first time in their lives – the youngest were 10 years old.  No multi-slide power point presentations for speakers to hide behind, no jargon and strategy speak.  Any long-winded response not addressing the issue wasn’t going to go down well when compared to the powerful testimony which connected with the audience moments earlier.

And then we put our proposals to the decision-makers to see if they agreed with them. And they all did – with every proposal we put forward.

• We won a pledge from a Clinical Commissioning Group Chair for a world class mental health service for young people, ending the scandal of no access for 16 and 17-year-olds.
• We won the Council’s backing for our campaign to make Birmingham a Living Wage city and a commitment to a roundtable meeting with employers and business leaders on jobs investment.
• We won the Police Commissioner’s backing to pilot the CitySafe scheme in our neighbourhoods. He also agreed to host a meeting with the boss of National Express (re bus safety).
• We secured the Department for Work & Pension’s commitment to take action on benefit payment delays and provide a direct contact point for our alliance to refer cases.

Community organising is about building power and participating in democracy: being realistic in what we demand and winning key victories to improve the lives of people across the city. There is no better example of this than from the many young people at the Assembly who demonstrated their readiness and ability to train as leaders and act in public life.

Email:  [email protected]      twitter:  @CitizensUKBham        facebook:  Citizens UK Birmingham

In Norway, the family is regarded as an important resource in preventing re-offending.  Family visits are encouraged and prisoners are able to spend time alone with their partners and their children. The best interests of the child are considered, in line with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and fathers in prison are encouraged to maintain relationships with their children whilst serving their sentence.

The majority of sentenced men in Halden prison, Norway’s newest and second largest prison, are entitled to a private visit from a partner or friend for two hours, twice a week.  In contrast to Norway, prisoners in England and Wales are normally allowed a two-hour social visit once a fortnight, although prisoners on the basic regime entitlement have fewer visits.  Social visits are closely monitored and are never private.

In Halden, private visits take place in small, individual visiting rooms which contain a sofa, a sink and a cupboard containing clean sheets, towels and condoms. A larger, brightly decorated room is available for prisoners with families. This room has toys and baby changing facilities.  Prisoners, partners and children can spend time together in private without being constantly observed by prison staff.  Commissioners asked whether children are searched for drugs before entering the prison but were told this never happens.  However, prisoners are searched after visits and could lose their right to a private visit if found in possession of illegal drugs.

A small number of people, such as prisoners who have a high risk of violence or visitors who have committed a drugs offence within the last five years, are restricted to closed visits. There are two rooms for closed visits with a one way glass observational panel so visits can be observed by prison staff.

Halden prison has a family visits house, one of two such facilities in the Norwegian prison estate where prisoners and their families can spend 24 hours together. The house, built within the perimeter fence, is well-equipped and homely.  It has a small kitchen, two bedrooms, a bathroom and a large living room with a dining table, a sofa and a television.  There is an outside play area with toys for children.  The patio doors look out onto the garden but it is impossible to avoid the imposing prison walls in the background.

The house is a short walk from the main prison wings and prisoners staying there receive regular visits from prison staff during the 24 hour period. Use of the house is based on trust and prisoners know that if they abuse that trust they could lose the chance to spend such a long period of time alone with their children again.

The visits house is not available to all.  Foreign national prisoners with family in other countries are unable to use the family house.  To be eligible for extended family visits, prisoners have to complete a child development education programme which is only available in the Norwegian language. Fifty per cent of the prisoners at Halden prison are foreign nationals, mainly from Eastern Europe.  Most do not speak Norwegian although some have picked up the language whilst inside. One prisoner on remand spoke of his sadness at not being able to see his children in the Netherlands or even speak to them by phone. Prisoners on remand often face the most severe restrictions on family contact, imposed on them by the courts and enforced by the prison.

For the children of Norwegian prisoners, the family visits house gives them the opportunity to spend some quality time with their dad even if they are constantly reminded that their father is in prison by the ever present view of the prison walls surrounding them.

For more information on the Commission on Sex in Prison visit www.commissiononsexinprison.org

I had the pleasure of speaking at a Clore Social Programme information Day in March this year. My immediate reaction was “Really? ME?? I hate public speaking. What would I even say??”

And then I stopped listening to my internal critic and started to reflect on my experience as a full time Clore Social Fellow and what I could share to encourage others to apply for the Fellowship. So here are some key reflections on why I applied, the impact it has had on me and why I encourage you to take the plunge.

Why I applied

I strongly believe that many things in life are about timing. When I applied for the Programme, I had recently moved back to London and had taken on a 12 month contract.  I had spent many years in the homelessness sector and was at a point in my career where the question “what next?” was becoming more and more urgent.

Just around this time I trained as an action learning facilitator. I met Ruth Cook from Action Learning Associates and she suggested that I take look at the Fellowship. I went home the same evening and did a bit of research – it was just what I was looking for. Leadership development is scarce in the homelessness sector so this was an opportunity to explore “what next?”, as well as build on the experience and skills I already had.

The impact

I completed the programme officially in December 2013 having undertaken it full time, and went back into employment in January 2014. I am still processing the impact of the Fellowship on me, both personally and professionally, but here is what has been the most immediate:

• I have a renewed commitment to social justice.
• I’ve learned that social leadership is about impact. What’s your impact on others? What’s the impact of what you’re doing?
• Coaching has given me invaluable insight and awareness, and reflective practice has become an obsession!
• I have expanded my professional networks in a way that was not available to me before
• The overall experience helped me to connect with the values that drive me. This has given me confidence in living those values, and in leading social change.

It is not a magic wand. When you return to the ‘real world’ there will still be challenges, you will still have crisis of confidence, things will go wrong. The difference for me is that I’m more comfortable with this and my own ability to move through these moments and learn from them.

So, why should you apply?

The Clore Social Leadership Programme is a commitment – there’s no doubt about that. You will be challenged and stretched in ways you never imagined at the start. But if you are considering applying for a Fellowship I would encourage you to do it. Why?

Because the programme will support you to lead impact for the people that matter.

Because the opportunity for real personal and professional development is rare.

Because the experience can act as a catalyst for change on many levels.

Because it will broaden your horizons.

Because good leadership in the social sector is needed now more than ever.

Find out more about how to apply at www.cloresocialleadership.org.uk/how-to-apply

La Toyah McAllister-Jones is a 2013 Clore Social Fellow, and is currently the personalisation development project manager at St Mungos Broadway, and an Associate at Collaborate. 

The effects of this state of food insecurity are widespread and dramatic. Public health experts have warned that the rise of malnutrition in the UK “has all the signs of a public health emergency”, with a 74 per cent increase in the number of malnutrition-related hospital admissions since 2008-09.

Call to action

The Just Fair Consortium calls on the Government to draw up a national right to food strategy and action plan, including an assessment of the ‘state of enjoyment’ of this right. Any further deterioration in income levels which undermine people’s ability to access food, shelter and basic services must be avoided. The Government must close the gap between income and food costs, including  the  introduction  of  employment  legislation  to  ensure  the  minimum  wage  is a  ‘living wage ‘ based on actual living costs.

Just Fair is asking the Government to take urgent action to reduce benefit delays, review how benefit sanctions and welfare reforms are being implemented and reduce unnecessary hardship, hunger and distress.  This action could include revising, or terminating, the benefit cap, and indexing benefits to the Consumer Price Index (CPI), in order to reverse the growing gap between benefit levels and food costs. As part of its human rights  duties, we are calling on the Government to mobilise all available resources, and make full use of its tax and spending powers, to deal with the national food crisis.

Paul Hunter, Head of Research at the Smith Institute,  discusses the changing face of suburbia and the findings of a new report ‘Poverty in Suburbia’

From Abigail’s Party to Keeping Up Appearances, suburbia has long been synonymous with relative comfort and cheery affluence. Yet the stereotype of suburbs as places inhabited solely by the upwardly mobile middle classes belies the number of those in poverty who live on the edges of our cities and towns. Indeed, as our new report, Poverty in Suburbia, demonstrates, an increasing number of people  in suburbs are now living in poverty.  There are approximately 6.8 million people in poverty in the suburbs of England and Wales – or put another way – 57% of those in poverty live in the suburbs.

To date tracking poverty in suburbs has not taken place. There have been occasional interventions, such as Boris Johnson arguing that welfare reform would result in a social cleansing of inner London and a flight to the suburbs, as well as growing interest in the issue from the US – but there have been few studies in the UK. Indeed, there are no official statistics on suburbia.

To help fill this information gap we used a range of indicators to map poverty and evaluate which ‘at risk’ groups are most common in suburbs. We looked in detail at incidences of poverty in eight major cities and found that there are significant socio-economic trends in the suburbs which have been largely ignored and which may worsen with continued budget cuts and pressure/reductions in services. For example, of those at risk of poverty there were higher concentrations of lone parents, part-time workers, people with a disability, and pension credit recipients in the suburbs than the rest of the country.

What is more many of the risk factors appear to be increasing in suburbs and the number of suburban neighbourhoods with above average levels of poverty has risen by 33% over the last decade. In addition, more people per head are on benefits (pension credit, job seeker’s allowance, income support and disability living allowance) in the suburbs than the rest of the country. And the claimant rates have increased more per head (or decreased less) in the suburbs since the recession.

These findings suggest the need for a greater focus on the suburbs by government (both local and central), policy makers and anti-poverty campaigners. This is even more of an imperative given that higher housing costs and a lack of affordable housing in inner cities is thought to be forcing poorer tenants out to the suburbs. This phenomena, combined with predicted rises in child poverty rates, could mean that poverty becomes even more prevalent in suburbia.

Poverty in suburbia has been ignored for too long. With a majority of people in poverty living in suburbs there needs to be a much better understanding of the issue. Many suburban areas have been badly affected by reductions in local authority and central government spending.

Suburbs may not be looked upon with great affection by some, yet they remain places where people want to live.  It is important to ensure that what attracted people to suburbia in the first place is not eroded.  This is not to say suburbs should be only for the relatively wealthy, but rather that particular suburbs most in need of support should not be overlooked.  This requires not only renewal and investment in the built environment but also greater understanding of the resilience of their local economies and social infrastructure.  We need to reimagine how we view suburbia and rethink how we support poorer suburbs.  Failure to do so risks overlooking the majority of people in poverty.

Jessica Kennedy of the Migrant and Refugee Communities Forum celebrates  the legacy of the Women on the Move Awards

On Thursday 6th March, 260 people gathered at the Southbank Centre to celebrate the achievements of inspirational women from refugee and migrant communities. The Women on the Move Awards, part of the WOW Festival and supported by Barrow Cadbury Trust are held to recognise the outstanding contributions that refugee women make to empowering and integrating their communities.  My organisation – The Forum – co-hosts the Awards alongside Migrants Rights Network and UNHCR.

The Awards are more than just a one night event, and aim to make an ongoing and lasting difference to the winners and their communities. The women gain recognition for, and raise the profile of, their work.  In addition, a fellowship provides access to high quality leadership development and help to build a network of exceptional women and the organisations they work with.

A month after the awards, as the dust has settled and the plaudits die down, what has changed?

Connections

Lilian Seenoi, who founded the only migrant forum in Derry-Londonderry from her kitchen table, won the Women of the Year Award for her work to ensure migrants and refugees can access support. The North-West Migrants Forum brings together diverse migrant groups and local communities which have suffered years of tension. The Awards have catapulted Lilian onto an international stage – she has just come back from Brussels, where she contributed to a public debate at the European Union on practical steps to challenge the poor treatment of migrants in Greece. She is shortly to fly to Turin, Italy, to take part in a European-wide project to tackle hate speech, before another visit to Brussels. All that before running a festival in June to bring together communities building on Derry-Londonderry’s place as UK City of Culture in 2013.

International attention also followed Tatiana Garavito, winner of the Young Woman of the Year Award for her tireless and determined work with the Latin American community in London. El Espectador, a mainstream newspaper in Colombia, published an article about Tatiana.  A short film commissioned by the Women on the Move Awards about Tatiana’s work will be shown at a documentary film festival in Colombia.  After the Awards Tatiana said they were “an amazing opportunity for us migrant women to show the world what we can achieve given a fair chance”.

Those who attended the Awards also found powerful connections. My personal highlight of the night was seeing, in the crush of the after-party, members of a collective of domestic workers connecting with a woman who works with Lilian and the North-West Migrants Forum and is trying to tackle exploitative labour practices in Northern Ireland. This fledgling relationship is continuing and already leading to mutual support, learning and, ultimately, stronger and more effective organisations.

Interest

Although the Awards receive little coverage from major news organisations, the winners and their organisations gain interest from a variety of other sources. Diana Nammi, who founded the Iranian-Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation (IKWRO) as a reaction to ‘honour’ killing and violence, was given special recognition for her tireless work. On the night, IKWRO’s twitter followers notably increased.  All our winners have been inundated with requests for interviews and articles.

Films that Women on the Move made about the Award winners have reached 5,561 viewers – spreading these courageous stories even further. As organisers, we are so glad to see how the Awards create a platform for extraordinary women to shout about their own and their organisations’ great work.  Tatiana was able to highlight the invisibility of the Latin American community in London: “with this [attention], the whole community get the recognition that we are campaigning for”.

Confidence

Perhaps most important, the women tell me, is an improvement in their confidence. Standing on stage as an Award winner, being celebrated for your work and able to share your story from a place of strength, can have a huge personal impact. From what we already know about these courageous and determined women, the only way from here is up.

We also know this is just the start of working relationships that benefit us all. As Diana, one of the award-winners, said after the ceremony, “it has been a huge pleasure – and I hope this will be a start for partnership work for the future”. The Forum hopes the Awards continue to impact throughout the year and look forward to seeing all our supporters – and more extraordinary women – in 2015! There may be only one day to celebrate international women, but Women on the Move are changing lives everyday.

As new reports highlight the increasing inequality in the UK economy; cities, towns and boroughs across the country have united to tackle issues of social exclusion in a new national network set up by the Leader of Birmingham City Council and the Bishop of Birmingham.

While in recent months economic statistics seem to be indicating a more positive outlook for the UK economy, it is clear that a significant proportion of our population are still not feeling the benefit of this improvement.  Only yesterday the Equality Trust released a report highlighting that the gap between rich and poor was rising and that inequality was costing the country £39bn a year.  Figures from Oxfam also released yesterday highlighted that the five richest families in the UK are wealthier than the bottom 20% of the entire population and the gap between the rich and the rest has grown significantly over the last two decades.

Continuing and increasing inequality has the potential to have a  long term damaging effect on our population, impacting on a wide spectrum of social outcome.   Duncan Exley from the Equality Trust highlighted it perfectly when he said yesterday “We know that inequality is a major cause of social problems from crime, to poor health to low educational performance, and that it is psychologically scarring, reducing trust in strangers and isolating individuals”.

Local authorities in towns and cities across the country are grappling with these issues every day.  However the challenge of dealing with social exclusion has been made more difficult because of the reduction in resources.  It is  this context that makes the launch of the National Social Inclusion Network and accompanying Birmingham Declaration so timely.

Led by the Bishop of Birmingham,  Birmingham’s Social Inclusion Process has over the past two years been trying to develop ways of dealing with social exclusion in the city.  The process quickly identified that the task of creating more inclusive cities has moved beyond what local or national government can do on their own, and that there was a need to build a network of local authorities to work together, share knowledge and understanding, as well as establishing a collective voice to challenge the Government to bring about changes that will make dealing with these issues easier.

This awareness resulted in the first National Social Inclusion Symposium being hosted by Birmingham City Council’s Leader, Cllr Sir Albert Bore and The Rt Revd David Urquhart, Bishop of Birmingham,  funded by the Barrow Cadbury Trust, in September 2013.  At this event 15 local authorities from across the country agreed to establish a National Social Inclusion Network and to sign a declaration to demonstrate their commitment.

By signing the declaration, participating authorities have agreed to:

• Be part of the National Social Inclusion Network
• Share learning and develop joint campaigning on key issues around social inclusion
• Build a strong collective voice to articulate the arguments for social inclusion for all communities across the country
• Identify action that can be taken around issues of shared concern

The authorities that have signed the declaration are Barrow-in-Furness, Birmingham, Bristol, Islington, Knowsley, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Plymouth, Sheffield, Southampton, Stoke-on-Trent and Tower Hamlets.

The work of the network starts now.  We are already sharing ideas of best practice from successful Birmingham programmes such as the fair money manifesto, places of welcome initiative  and the Birmingham Jobs fund; and we are learning about other projects from across the country.

Over the next few months we will continue to work together in a variety of ways across the network with the shared determination to address deep-rooted issues of inequality and disadvantage and deliver the changes needed.

If you would like to  follow the work of the network you can do so through the blog , via social media @fairbrum and #fairplaces or by getting in touch with our team [email protected]

It’s a commonplace to see the word ‘Roma’ juxtaposed to ‘homeless’, ‘beggar’, ‘benefits’, ‘rubbish’ and ‘migrant’ – when not tied up with trafficking and stealing children.  Unless it’s an absence as in the current UK government’s National Roma Inclusion Strategy, which pointedly hardly refers to Roma at all.  So we are forced to accept Roma ‘deficiency’ and their need for assistance or support (or solidarity even…)

What a joy then to attend an event in Manchester last month[1] where a panel considered the opposite question – how do Roma pose an opportunity for UK cities?   We heard tough head teachers say that the presence of Roma children in school had “brought us an understanding of the work ethic, and how children can be resourceful and adapt, and – a little but important thing – how young children understood how to eat together and with adults….  In fact, Roma children have done us all a service by teaching us to be better at our jobs”.  A point a leading social entrepreneur made: “Personal social services in this country are organised for Mr & Mrs Average – but rarely for anyone slightly different, let alone chaotic.  Roma are different, and if we can co-develop services with Roma then everyone would benefit”.   A young Roma woman said that it was only coming to this country that (a) she knew what discrimination was, as she’d accepted the inevitability of exclusion in her country of birth, and that (b) she became aware of her own capabilities and contribution.  A university teacher spoke about the importance of family relationships, self-reliance, innovation and adaptability (especially to earn a living) – all those virtues that are supposedly upheld by leading politicians and newspaper editors.   A leading politician talked about how young Roma people can enable neighbourhoods to become stronger and more confident as barriers and misunderstandings get broken down initially between young people.  And finally, a writer reminded us that Britain has a long, but variable history of welcoming people trying to both make a better life and escaping oppressive treatment; “do we want to move back from being one of the most tolerant and multi-ethnic countries in the world – and if so, at what cost to many of us?”

There are some critics of migration and EU migrant communities, who focus on the incidents of people who appear willing to work for very low pay in appalling conditions, and families who appear to tolerate substandard and overcrowded housing.    But isn’t this a classic illustration of ‘blame the victim’?  Where are the regulations and enforcement actions taken by, for example, HMRC against rogue employers, or by housing authorities against unscrupulous landlords?  As the social entrepreneur said at the Manchester meeting, if we can develop good services with and for Roma, everyone benefits.

The Government don’t seem to have explored the opportunities that Roma bring.  Twenty years ago, there was a strong offer of friendship and potential welcome to the East/Central European states and peoples.  But is it only their doctors and IT specialists we want; and at a pinch, the hairdresser and plumber?  The Roma communities emerge from decades of forced assimilation or forced exclusion; the UK offers hope.  And the Roma bring with them behaviours and aptitudes that are sorely needed.  What a treat to attend a meeting where the words ‘Roma’ and ‘success’ and ‘opportunity’ were heard.  The Roma Support Group applauds this type of initiative, and welcomes a growing movement within the UK of determined Roma and non-Roma activists who want to concentrate on the potential, rather than allow the mindless stereotypes to prevail in what passes for our national narrative.

www.romasupportgroup.org.uk

On 19 February in a small cafe run by former homeless people and ex prisoners in the East End of London, Criminal Justice Innovations recently launched a book and a support programme. The book is called StreetCraft – and it tells the true stories of dozens of amazing people who have gone against the grain and attempted to do something new within the criminal justice system. The support programme – StreetCraft Scholarships – will assist the next generation of people like those who contributed to the book, to make their innovative ideas for improving the lives of victims, making communities safer, and ‘resocialising’ offenders, a reality.

The book took many months to put together, not least because the innovation world is uncertain and the criminal justice world can move both very fast and painfully slow. Over the course of putting the book together we spoke to over thirty justice pioneers, twenty nine of whom were eventually featured in the book. Two of these worked on the Transition to Adulthood (T2A) pilot projects, demonstrating the importance of focusing on a young person’s maturity level rather than deciding whether to treat them as an adult or child based on some arbitrary age cut-off point. Their experiences, like of many others we spoke to, show how important it is to forge the right alliances early on and have early stage support  when you are trying to improve aspects of criminal justice practice which your professional judgement tells you aren’t working all that well.

This is one of the reasons the Centre for Justice Innovation has launched the StreetCraft Scholarships, in partnership with the Young Foundation and Clinks. We believe that the brilliant people who opened up to us and the world, by participating in the book, are right. There is a wealth of innovative ideas and capacity for innovation in the criminal justice world. And there are many creative passionate people working in the sector, who want to make things better. But the gap lies at the very early stage, when an idea is first formed and it needs to be developed to prove that it can fly. Big criminal justice delivery agencies aren’t always so great at nurturing the innovations brought to the table by ‘StreetCrafters’, and even those which are don’t always have the right alliances to ensure the right reach, support and embedding in the community.

We are not claiming that the StreetCraft Scholarship will change all of that overnight. But we do hope to keep proving, as we did in the book, and as smart funders like the Barrow Cadbury Trust prove through high impact collaborative initiatives as the T2A Alliance, those who want to innovate in the sector, driven by their sense of social mission, are not alone. If you would like to read some truly engaging and sometimes moving stories of people trying to make the world a better place, you can download the book for free here. And if you know such a person and feel they may need a bit of support in taking their practice-led idea to the next level, please send them our way.