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Speaking about North Ayrshire councils' commitment to equality
It was a real pleasure to attend the reception and awards
ceremony in Ayr on Saturday and show North Ayrshire’s support for LGBT Youth
Scotland. I was there both in my role as
Youth Champion and as Chair of the Corporate Equality group. North Ayrshire’s Corporate Equality Group is
responsible for directing, supporting and reviewing the arrangements for
promoting Equality, tackling discrimination and fostering good relations on
behalf of North Ayrshire Council.
North Ayrshire council has strengthened its approach to
equalities over recent years. We now
have 9 equality outcomes which we aim to achieve. These were devised after extensive
consultation with our communities and act as a focus across the council.
Our Equality Action Plan contains actions from all Council
services outlining exactly what they will do to achieve outcomes such as
“pupils feel safer in schools” and “the incidence of hate crime is reduced”. In Education, very important work is being
undertaken in our schools. Training is
being provided to ensure that staff are better informed in relation to the
reduction of homophobic language in particular and indeed discriminatory
practice in general. We are improving
the recording of bullying behaviour and Equalities champions in every school
are promoting an anti-bullying ethos.
We are particularly proud of “OpeN Ayrshire” our first LGBT
Youth group. The group are well
established meeting weekly to promote and support local Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual
and Transgender young people. OpeN
Ayrshire were recently finalists for a Rising Stars award, this is an awards
ceremony held in North Ayrshire to recognise the positive contributions our
Young People make to their community.
The group as a whole were recognised for their excellent work they've done as a team creating and promoting their group for LGBT young people and
their supporters – we are very proud of them and I was really pleased that
Joshua and Sian from the group attended the civic reception with us.
At North Ayrshire Council we aim to mainstream
equalities. We are moving away from
seeing equality issues as an additional part of council business and instead
recognise that promotion of equality must be an integral part of the way North
Ayrshire Council thinks and functions.
In April this year we published a report on Mainstreaming the Equality Duty in North Ayrshire. This provides a
useful overview of the range of work we are taking to raise the profile of
equalities issues within the council.
We are very clear that it’s not enough just to ensure that our
policies and practices not discriminating unlawfully and are taking proactive
steps to promote equality and advance equality of opportunity. To do this we use an Equality Impact
Assessment toolkit. The results of these
assessments are available on our website.
In further support of this approach Equalities training will be
mandatory for all North Ayrshire Council employees and an e-learning training
course has been developed, which in addition to training provided as part of
the corporate training programme will help all staff to take on board their
responsibilities under the Equality Act 2010.
For us it’s not just an understanding of equality policies and
procedures but also effective implementation and meaningful change throughout
North Ayrshire that is required.
This is a journey we are on and means building on previous
work in changing sometimes long held attitudes, language and behaviours. I really believe North Ayrshire is making
progress, however recognise that there is always more that we can learn.
Events like Saturdays are a wonderful opportunity to do just
that. I enjoyed hearing from the other
speakers on the evening and it was a privilege to be part of celebrating the
success of our young award winners.
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| Signing the Pledge |
