Citizens Advice was delighted to host the Carnegie Project Steering Group in Belfast this week. The Steering Group were meeting to develop a toolkit to address race discrimination for CABx across the UK.
Mohammed Dhalech, Centre for Local Policy Studies, who is compiling the tool kit said: "This should prove an invaluable resource for bureaux tackling discrimination and inequality."
In September 2006 Citizens Advice (England & Wales), Citizens Advice Northern Ireland and Citizens Advice Scotland applied to Carnegie to support a programme looking to see how race discrimination advice in rural areas could be improved. In April 2007, Carnegie agreed to fund a programme across England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
In Northern Ireland race awareness courses were run for rural CAB and information translated into several languages. Work was carried out with bureaux in order to identify how they could improve the race discrimination advice they provided. This then allowed the production and delivery of a training programme and information resources to meet the needs that were identified.
Once bureaux had been supported to identify these issues and to improve the race discrimination advice offered they were expected to work with groups of people from Minority Ethnic Communities and Migrant Workers in the local area to publicise their advice service to these communities. It was also anticipated that increased contact with these groups would allow bureaux to recruit volunteers from these communities which would increase their capacity to deliver advice to all client groups.
From left to right: Louisa McKee, Training Manager, Citizens Advice NI, Michelle Bingham, Citizens Advice England & Wales, Alayne Kinver, Director of Development, Citizens Advice NI, Natasha Francis, Training Officer, Citizens Advice NI, Derek Alcorn, Chief Executive, Citizens Advice NI, Mohammed Dhalech, Centre for Local Policy Studies, Gerard Crofton-Martin, Citizens Advice England & Wales