“We need a beacon that humanises human rights, inspiring everyone to realise they benefit all of us here in the UK, every day, in very practical ways; that they are an important part of our shared heritage, helping to make equality, dignity and respect real for everyone.”
This is how Paul Farmer, Chief Executive of Mind, launched Equally Ours last month as he explained why human rights are so important to all of us, including the people with mental health problems who Mind works with.
More than 100 campaigners and communicators, from large charities to small pressure groups, came together on 19 November to discuss how to develop a more positive conversation about human rights in the UK, and to hear how Equally Ours will support that.
Equally Ours has come into being on the back of two years of research and planning by a wide network of charities, all keen to see the public debate on human rights focus on how to make rights real, in practice, for the people they work with. Recognizing that the everyday story of human rights is missing from this debate at the moment, the Equally Ours partners are working together to raise awareness of the benefits of human rights for everyone.
Our research shows that most people are already supportive of human rights but that there is limited awareness of how human rights work in practice; this leads to many people feeling conflicted about them. We know that when people hear about the way that human rights are relevant to them in their everyday lives, they understand them better and are more supportive overall. As organisations who believe firmly in the importance of strengthening the human rights safety net for everyone, it is important that we keep raising awareness of its benefits.
There is a real challenge involved in this: our analysis of the current media discourse about human rights shows that it is predominantly negative, with stories showing the benefits of human rights in everyday life almost entirely missing.
But this untold story is also our opportunity. By giving a voice to individual stories of people’s human rights being affected, we believe we can open up a more positive public debate about human rights more broadly.
When we get older, human rights protect our dignity in hospitals. If we have mental health problems our human rights help ensure we receive high quality, compassionate and safe care. We can use our human rights to challenge racism and disability discrimination. As children, our human rights support us if we experience violence and sexual abuse. This is the human rights story that we want more people to hear.
As Paul Farmer says,
“As organisations working with people whose human rights are too often at risk, we want to help people understand how the human rights safety net can protect them. This can help more people understand and feel confident about challenging abuses when they happen. It can also help prevent abuses happening in the first place.
We need to facilitate that kind of conversation on a national scale and reframe the narrative. The way to achieve this is through a values-based approach to communicating about human rights. Mind supports Equally Ours because this is exactly what the campaign aims to do.”
Working as a partnership, Equally Ours has exciting plans for 2014. We will produce communications briefings for campaigners and advocates, deliver training sessions, source and share stories that show the human rights safety net in action and work with organisations to develop values-based ways of talking about human rights. All of our resources are free to charities and NGOs interested in a new way of talking about the issues that matter to them and the people they work with.
If you would like more information about Equally Ours, sign up to our free briefings or get involved, get in touch.
T: @equallyOurs
This week saw the launch of two reports supported by the Barrow Cadbury Trust under its Resources and Resilience programme. On Wednesday 21 November, the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) released the first part of its Breakthrough Britain II research on debt – Maxed Out – Serious Personal Debt in Britain. Then on Thursday the Fairbanking Foundation (FF) released A Better Kind of Banking.
On first reading, these reports cover quite different ground. However, the links are there. Maxed Out looks at the causes and consequences of problem debt, exploring the personal, socio-economic and structural factors that cause it. It isn’t surprising to hear that those on low incomes, the unemployed, single parents, older people and those with mental health conditions are among the most likely to fall into debt. However, the report raises the important issue of the growing scale of personal debt, and the impact of the rising cost of living on this. Individuals who previously managed to get by and endure an occasional financial shock, can no longer do so.
The CSJ estimates that 8.2 million households in the UK now have no savings at all (around 50 per cent of these are from low income households). More and more people are turning to high-cost lenders to cover income shortfalls and half of payday loan users (600,000) took out the loan because they had no other access to credit. At a time of year when households’ fuel usage will be going up and many will have to borrow to afford Christmas, this is worrying news.
There are solutions to serious personal debt we are told, such as access to affordable credit, free debt advice and better promotion of alternative financial providers such as Credit Unions. CSJ also raises the issue of complex financial products and the need to make these simpler or more appropriate for users. Excessive charges for overdrafts and penalty fees deter many people from engaging with the mainstream banking system altogether.
A Better Kind of Banking offers examples of banking products that encourage saving and/or help customers manage their money better. For example, thinkmoney (not a bank) sets up two accounts for its customers, one receives the customer’s income and is used to pay their regular bills, with remaining funds automatically transferred into the second card account. The client can use this for their spending, but if they want to move some of their designated “bills money” to their card account, they contact thinkmoney and discuss the transaction with a Money Manager. The Money Manager will try and re-jig their budget to make the transfer possible without missing a bill payment, but where this isn’t possible, give common-sense budgeting advice to clients. Customers also get regular texts on the state of their accounts so they can budget accordingly.
Another example, Secure Trust Bank offers a current account into which customers can pay their income and make direct debits and standing orders. Customers can upload money from their account onto a prepaid card, so they can only spend what they have on their card. As there is no credit facility, there is no need for credit checks. If the items being paid out of its customers’ accounts bounce then the Secure Trust Bank does not charge a fee.
Both of these accounts come at a monthly cost to the customer, which will limit who can engage with them. However, they are great examples of how banking products can help people to try and manage their income. Neither can combat the rise in living costs or prevent a financial shock, but they can help to limit the chance of a person falling into debt into the first place. The CSJ report cites ‘escalating penalty charges’ and ‘juggling of finances’ as some of the contributing factors to a spiral of debt. Any banking products that help customers avoid and manage these better must be a good thing. And, the report tells us, thinkmoney and the Secure Trust Bank have business models that work.
It seems likely that personal debt will continue to grow as Universal Credit is rolled out, the cost of living continues to go up and a rise in interest rates looms. It is even more critical then that more banks offer products that help customers save when they can and manage whatever they have better. The FF report is optimistic that a culture shift amongst the larger banks is coming, but believes that more public and competition scrutiny, improved infrastructure and better regulation is needed. These won’t come easily, but as the authors of the report point out, the ingredients are there. A different kind of mainstream bank, “based on a culture and business model in which banks are paid for helping customers to manage their money more successfully, including saving and staying out of debt” is not an impossibility and if ever it was needed, it’s now.
On Tuesday, the new living wage was announced at £7.65 outside of London and £8.80 within the capital. This comes after the minimum wage was increased to £6.31 last month.
The living wage is calculated annually with separate rates for those living outside London (by the Centre for Research on Social Policy at Loughborough University), and for those living in the capital city (by the Greater London Authority’s Living Wage Unit). The living wage is predicated on one simple fact: vast numbers of people in work do not earn enough to live on. The introduction of the minimum wage in 1999 has acted as a buffer against some of the most extreme forms of low pay but, with living standards rising and minimum wage increases failing to keep up with the rate of inflation, the minimum wage is not a buffer or a solution to low, insecure pay.
The Resolution Foundation’s report, Low Pay Britain 2013, found that the number of people being paid less than the living wage has rocketed in recent years, increasing from 3.4m in 2009 to 4.8m in April 2012, making up 20% of the workforce.
Low pay is a significant contributor to in-work poverty, and the institute for Fiscal Studies’ analysis demonstrated that hourly pay is a better predictor of in-work poverty than hours of work. However, the characteristics of a person’s job does contribute to the risk of low pay.
Low Pay Britain 2013 illustrated that some groups are more vulnerable to being in low pay than others:
- Women make up the majority of low paid workers whilst a recent report by the TUC illustrated that low pay amongst young women has trebled over the last 20 years.
- Low pay is higher amongst those in low- and middle-skilled occupations such as sales or customer services, as well as those on part time or temporary contacts.
- Older and younger workers are more likely to be paid below the living wage threshold.
- 16-20 year olds make up 83% of those in extreme low pay.
Current political discourse surrounding making work pay has continuously highlighted work as the best means of getting out of poverty. However, this is only possible if work pays enough for people to live on and if they are in secure roles with opportunities to progress. Without a living wage, in-work poverty persists and low wages will continually be subsidised by the taxpayer. Since launching in 2001, the Living Wage Campaign has won over £210m of additional wages, lifting 40,000 families out of poverty, and over 430 employers have been accredited as living wage employers.
The living wage benefits both workers and employers, as highlighted by joint research from the Queen Mary University of London and Trust for London. Employees are not only better able to provide for themselves and families but also reported that being paid a living wage allowed them to spend more time with their families. Living wage employers benefitted from having more positive and loyal employees as well as better retention rates.
However, despite the traction the campaign has gained thus far, there is still a way to go. To support the millions of people currently in low-paid roles, more employers need to join the existing 450 employers already committed to paying the living wage, and across different sectors. This comes at only a small cost to the organisations. A commitment to the living wage, alongside secure employment, provides the best means of lifting people out of in work poverty whilst at the same time creating better workplaces.
Like many others I’ve been watching the debate about energy company profits and price rises. I find myself disillusioned with the whole thing; I feel helpless and outside of the discussion; I don’t feel I have a voice and neither do the people I work with. Individuals are of little relevance or consequence – it’s about the wants of corporate finance, majority shareholding institutions concerned more with money than the needs of people. Those on the margins don’t matter, dividends do!
Whilst politicians consider whether levels of profit are too high or if it should be made easier to switch supplier, what I and my colleagues know, and can evidence, is that many people are suffering real hardship. One of the services we run at Birmingham Settlement is a debt advice service and the numbers of people coming to us for advice has spiralled this year. Yesterday we had 53 people through our door seeking financial help and advice – the largest number we’ve ever had in a single day.
I would like politicians and energy company CEOs to spend time with some of the people who through circumstance beyond their control cannot afford the fuel needed to heat their homes or cook their food. We work in partnership with others such as food banks to provide support where it is most needed and I’m afraid a response we are increasingly hearing from clients is ‘there’s no point, I can’t afford the fuel to cook the food’.
I was involved in a discussion a few days ago about whether the UK was the 5th, 6th or 7th largest economy in the world – it seemed to depend on which report you read; the discussion went on to whether it was right for people to be limited to three food parcels per family, irrelevant of circumstance. I was amazed that the idea of food banks now seems to be an acceptable concept, everyday language – is it really acceptable in 2013 that the second largest city in one of the biggest economies in the world has such a problem; that its own citizens cannot cook the contents of a food parcel because they have no fuel?
I am reminded of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs – the most basic human life needs include food, drink, shelter, warmth – how on earth can we expect people to grow and prosper if they can’t cook a meal?
Winter is almost on us and for too many this means additional hardship as they will not be able to meet the costs of soaring fuel bills; they will no doubt face the consequences of not being able to contribute to the billions handed out in dividends to the privileged few.
At Birmingham Settlement we have suggested a practical measure that could really make a difference. We are asking the energy companies to give every household access to an hours’ supply a day irrespective of debt and personal circumstance. This means if prepayment meters have no credit fuel would still be available for one hour everyday – we suggest between 12 noon and 1 pm. Energy providers (electric and gas) have the technology to make this happen. The residential supply of water cannot be legally disconnected, where as fuel is increasingly disconnected; and to the poorest families in our society. This is wrong! Profit making energy companies need to show social responsibility – support society by putting more back, and now!
Birmingham Settlement has begun an e-petition to ask the Government to legislate for the basic human right for every household to be able to cook a hot meal each day under a Fuel for Food campaign – you can support us by signing the e-petition here.
It’s not often that Russia provides lessons on prison reform but earlier this year the Federal Penitentiary Service proposed that the age at which teenage offenders must be transferred to adult penal colonies should be deferred from 19 to 25 years old. Depending on maturity and behaviour, young adults will be able to stay in juvenile correctional facilities where they will be protected from the worst risks of the adult system and can benefit from the educational regime on offer.
Contrast this with the direction of travel in England and Wales where increasingly young adults are being held alongside older inmates in establishments that combine the functions of a specialist Young Offender Institution (YOI) and adult prison. It is sometimes claimed that adults can have a positive influence on the behaviour of younger prisoners. It is certainly true that many establishments which exclusively house young offenders struggle to keep violence under control and to deliver the educational approach they are supposed to. The Prison Inspectorate’s scathing report on Feltham B earlier this year questioned the viability of it being set aside for just young adult prisoners.
But does the answer really lie in integrated establishments? Earlier this week the Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) at Portland in Dorset reported serious concerns about mixing young offenders and adult prisoners. They reported a dramatic increase in drug finds and a rise in substance trading, debt, bullying and pressure on susceptible prisoners which made the facility much less safe. The IMB suggested that a clear physical separation of young people and adults on the site would be an improvement.
A new report I’ve written for the Transition to Adulthood Alliance looks at how best to deal with this challenging age group in a prison setting. Focussing on the arrangements in England and Wales where the government is considering the future of the young adult custodial estate, the report draws on lessons from Europe.
In Germany , in each of the lander , separate youth prisons accommodate all of those from 14-21 sentenced by the courts. Under 18’s and young women live in separate house blocks but take full part in the active daily programme of education , training and employment. Unlike many British prisons, almost no young people are found on the wings during the day with evenings and weekends filled with a wide range of recreation activities. The campus at Neustrelitz north of Berlin feels more like a further education college than a prison. Staff eat their lunch in a canteen alongside the trainees. In the UK meals are almost always taken in cells , with disruptive prisoners subject to the what is sometimes disturbingly called “controlled feeding”.
The Prison Service in England and Wales acknowledges that even in a dedicated YOI, life for a young offender is not that different to prison life for adult prisoners. Staff in a YOI they admit “will not be able to give you much individual support, as there will generally be one member of staff for every ten young people.” This is a starling admission and the nub of the problem. Wherever they are held , young adults require regimes and levels of care and intervention which respond to their distinctive and developing needs.
This will be particularly true in the re-designated regional resettlement prisons which will prepare prisoners for release. As with the Transforming Rehabilitation Proposals as a whole, without a specific focus on the young adult age group, they will continue to be a neglected group.
Rob Allen is co-founder of the Justice and Prisons and a former Chair of the Transition to Adulthood Alliance. You can read his report in full online here.
Rob Berkley, Director of the Runnymede Trust, explains why they are working to end racism this generation. Over the last weeks we have witnessed commemoration of the March on Washington, the high-point of the US civil rights movement. A timely reminder of the difference that movements can make, but also a challenge to this generation to take action to end injustice. In 2013, racism is still a problem which pervades our society. Since our inception in 1968 Runnymede has been fighting to achieve race equality in the UK. We’ve done this through research, network building, and policy engagement. But recently, we’ve been feeling as if this isn’t enough. Race equality seems to have been filed in the ‘too difficult’ box. In order for discrimination to stop, the struggle against racism needs to be part of the public consciousness. We need to change our approach; we need everybody to not just feel that racism is not good for society, but to act to eliminate it.
Although the Equalities Act 2010 protects ethnic minorities from racial discrimination, your ethnic background still significantly impacts your life chances. In education, if you are from a Black Caribbean background you are three times more likely to be excluded from school, and data revealed by the BBC shows that 87,915 racist incidents were recorded between 2007 and 2011 in British schools. After school, youth unemployment is experienced by one in five white men, but one in two young black men. When seeking work you will have to send out 78% more job applications if you have a ‘foreign sounding’ name. On the street, you will be 7 times more likely to be stopped and searched if you are black than your white counterparts, and 2 times more likely if you are Asian. In health, black and Asian people with dementia are less likely to receive a diagnosis or receive it at a later stage than their white British counterparts. Chillingly, 106 people have been killed in racist and suspected racist attacks since Stephen Lawrence’s death in 1993.
It is everybody’s responsibility to change this. Racism is a product of society and as a society we have the power to end it. It can be solved, if we work together. We believe that it everybody makes changes in their own lives, workplaces and communities, we can cause a fundamental shift where treating people equally and accepting difference will become the norm.
This September we are launching ‘End Racism This Generation’, a movement to end racism in the UK. The key to its success will be informing people about the continued existence of racism and the damage it causes to all of us, and sharing knowledge of what works in combating it.
Fighting for racial equality is everyone’s business. End Racism This Generation will create an online platform where those who want to make change can gather, learn, and create new networks for change. We will also be hosting events all around England and Wales to connect people together and spread the message.
People will be able to pledge the action they plan to take on the End Racism This Generation website. Their pledges will be mapped by area, which will allow individuals, organisations and businesses to see what is going on around them. It will present the opportunity for people to create partnerships to end racism. Crucially, these pledges will inspire others to take actions, and show what works.
We want the pledges to be non-restrictive, no action is too small, no pledge too insignificant. We want everybody to feel empowered to end racism, regardless of the resources at their disposal. A pledge could simply be to find out more about racism in the UK or to spread the word on how to tackle it through social networks. On a larger scale, organisations could pledge to show how their work already reduces racial inequality or use the momentum of the campaign to launch new activities. Businesses can pledge to work harder to ensure employees reflect the make up of the population at all levels of the business, including the boardroom. Schools and universities can pledge to take action in ensuring equality of educational experience for its minority ethnic students. And everybody can support the campaign by a donation, by giving money, time or offering the resources at their disposal.
We want this collective action to signal a shared commitment to work towards a Britain without racism; a Britain which accepts differences between people but treats them equally in all aspects of their lives. No one person, or organisation can achieve this by themselves but together we can end it.
You can find out more about the campaign on the Runnymede Trust’s website, on Twitter and on Facebook.
Our new report Better Courts sets out the case that court-led innovation is the key to reducing crime. It was perhaps unsurprising, then, that at the launch event on September 9th, the first question asked was. “So, who are the innovators?”
Unfortunately, neither I, nor my co-author Stephen Whitehead had a simple answer to the question. In the 11 case studies the report is based on, the drive to make things better came from many places: from courts staff, from sentencers, from probation, from the NHS, from local charities. Courts themselves were in the forefront in some innovations and the last on board in others.
As the Q&A went on, there were questions about how the principles of better courts— fairness, a focus on the backgrounds and needs of the people, acting with authority and acting swiftly— would apply to female defendants. We’ve already seen, gender-specific developed in some places to give women offenders in the community the support they need. Expanding specialist court sittings for women might be an answer in some areas. However other courts may simply not see enough women offenders to make this feasible. The discussion also touched on the more general barriers to holding specialist court sessions, but we suggested we could learn from projects like West London drug court how have achieved precisely that.
Some participants suggested that courts and sentencers lacked the incentives to focus on reducing crime. While crime reduction is one of the five purposes of sentencing, judges and magistrates get next to no feedback on sentences’ effectiveness, leaving them unable to know how to improve their effectiveness. As one respondent suggested, the current situation was like asking sentencers to be “surgeons who then never get to the see the patient after the operation.”
Of course, events like this, and engaging conversations like we had, are only the start. It is easy once you have published a new paper to want to move on to the next thing. But Stephen and I are committed over the next couple of years not only to find out who the innovators are, but how we can help.
Real Talk utilises the arts as a gang intervention tool, running workshops in schools to open a dialogue about the problems faced by young people living in areas of high tension. This information is then adapted into a piece of forum theatre and performed in front of young people involved. The interactive performance encourages the audience to find solutions to the problems they outlined through taking on the role of the main character to change the negative outcomes presented into positive outcomes.
The film below illustrates one such forum theatre performance at a Wolverhampton Secondary School.
The Wren’s Nest is not a name that conjures up a positive image for most people living in the Black Country. Synonymous with a once notorious area of North Dudley, which many still would try and avoid. However, for over a year now, HOPE not hate have been working in both the Wren’s Nest and Priory estates to try and change the perceptions of the area from the outdated negative image and towards something of which residents can feel proud.
In 2011 HOPE not hate produced the Fear & Hope report, which among other findings, discovered that those who are most vulnerable to the messages of extremist organisations tend to have a very pessimistic outlook on life and their area, and believe that their future is in the hands of others. Consequently, HOPE not hate have been working hard in the Wren’s Nest and Priory to encourage local residents to view their community from a different perspective; to hopefully get them to see the positives of their area and celebrate everything that is good about their community – rather than turning to a hard estate image as a way to find their identity.
Our work does not just stop there. We also aim to help empower local residents to take action in the locality and create positive change, and hopefully give them the knowledge and skills to do this. Thankfully, both of these estates have one of the counties best community resources right on their doorstep – the Wren’s Nest Nature Reserve.
The Nature Reserve is one of the most important geological sites in the United Kingdom, and is highly regarded amongst geologists the world over. Fossils date back to an ancient tropical seabed alongside well-preserved evidence of the glacier which cut through Dudley during the Ice Age. As if this was not enough, lime mines dating back to the 17th Century dominate the area and give a constant reminder of the role this region, and the locals’ ancestors, played in the Industrial Revolution. Most communities would be singing about this from their rooftops, unfortunately however, a small minority ruin it for others by leaving their beer cans, and other less savoury items, lying around. So when a group from IHG (InterContinental Hotels Group) in Brierley Hill offered their time to get involved with some community work, HOPE not hate got in contact with them to help clean up the reserve.
The motivation behind the clean-up day was to provide a cleaner and more pleasant environment for families and children who wish to use the nature reserve during the school summer holidays. On the day around 22 volunteers gave up their time to help clear, very literally, a truck load of rubbish from the reserve.
Despite it raining all day the local volunteers remained high-spirited, and the most encouraging aspect from the HOPE not hate perspective was hearing how the volunteers changed their perception of the area quite quickly during the day.
As we started quite a few were certainly aware of the reputation of the area and were, understandably, inquisitive about its realities. For the majority, this was a part of their town to which they would never consider coming. Both the Wren’s Nest and Priory offered nothing positive to the town – it was just an area that one would whizz past on the Birmingham New Road. As we walked around, they learnt about the history of the area and were given a quick lesson in how to spot fossils of the tropical plants that would have once covered the area.
Before long the volunteers were actively, and passionately, discussing amongst one another how their thoughts on the area had been transformed and would certainly be encouraging others to check out the Wren’s Nest as an interesting place to visit. Cleaning up all that rubbish and ensuring that young children passing through the reserve do not have to see the evidence of someone’s Friday night litter on the paths and bushes was of course invaluable and will help encourage more and more residents of Wren’s Nest and Priory make better use of the resource. However, what was most important was that other locals, albeit only a small group to start with, have completely changed their attitude towards the estates, opening them up to visitors, with the ultimate aim of the estates finally lifting that sense of isolation, which has had such a damaging effect on the morale of those living there.
Owen Jones is the West Midlands Community Organiser for HOPE not hate
Here at OBV we are currently in the middle of yet another of our award-winning mentoring and shadowing scheme this one covering Birmingham and Wolverhampton with the West Midlands Civic Leadership Programme, funded by the Barrow Cadbury Trust. One particular go-getting member amidst an already elite group of 40 individuals is Sundeep Dhadley who has, it would seem, a finger in every pie and has managed to garner himself a position as the newest member and Third Sector representative of the new Policing and Crime Board in Wolverhampton.
Dhadley’s new role will mean he is directly involved in how the board set their policing priorities and he hopes to be able to address the deficit of BME viewpoints in this decision making arena. He was inspired to apply whilst sitting on another strategic board, which fed into him being recommended for this newly established one.
Sunny, as he prefers to be called, has been extremely active on the Civic Leadership Programme. He, along with other members of the programme, volunteered to help with Neena Gill’s campaign for re-election as an MEP to gain an insight into campaigning. He says he feels privileged to have been present as Gill herself explained a little about her political journey and how the role of MEP directly affects people’s lives often in ways they may not realise and how laws and legislation at the European level get handed down to Britain. He expressed a desire to eventually become an MEP and contribute to bringing long-term sustainable change to the UK and it appears to be a fully realisable dream as he shows no signs of stopping.
All this is in addition to being a full time member of OBV’s Civic Leadership Programme for the West Midlands to whom Sunny attributes his achievements for the opportunities it has afforded him. He is rubbing shoulders with MPs and Councillors and acknowledges that without OBV, it would’ve been difficult to gain such exposure and would not have been as simple to open doors to initial contact opportunities. Sunny is always asking insightful questions, a quality that has been noted by his mentors and peers alike and has brought him into the recognition of people of influence. He encourages all of us to follow his example and take the initiative. He said,
Do not be afraid to put your head above the parapet and do not worry if you don’t understand at first – ask until you do.“
The last thing Sunny insisted that I do was to thank OBV for the opportunity invested in him and that he remains eager and is looking forward to continuing to soak up all knowledge as he embarks on his Councillor shadowing of the leader of the Council in Wolverhampton, Councillor Roger Lawrence. Well done Sunny, you are a model for us all.
