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Race Equality Advisory Forum

Appendix D: Summary of Recommendations

4 The Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000

4.1 The Forum welcomes the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000. It endorses the 2001 consultation paper's statement on the key features for organisations promoting race equality.

4.2 The Forum recommends that all organisations adopt a mainstreaming approach to tackling racism and promoting race equality.

4.3 The Forum recommends that Scottish Ministers adopt the framework on specific duties set out in the 2001 consultation paper and that the Executive supports and encourages the development of good practice across the public sector in Scotland to ensure that compliance with the new specific duties delivers on the Executive's commitment to promote
race equality.

6 Areas for Action

6.1 In order to promote race equality training, the Forum recommends that the Scottish Executive, in partnership with communities and others, develop:

• a database of race equality trainers and advisers;
• a national framework of core standards for race equality training; and
• in the longer term, an accreditation scheme for race equality trainers and advisers.

6.2 The Forum recommends that Scottish Ministers adopt the framework on specific duties on ethnic monitoring set out in the 2001 Race Relations (Amendment) Act consultation paper.

6.3 The Forum recommends that all public sector organisations:

• establish what barriers exist to equality of access to information about and participation in employment opportunities in their organisation;
• seek to identify any direct and/or institutional discrimination against applicants from minority ethnic backgrounds;
• equality-proof their practices and policies relating to recruitment, retention and progression of staff; such equality-proofing to include a race equality impact assessment;
• consider the relevance and contribution of positive action programmes;
• set organisational targets for recruitment, retention and progression of minority ethnic employees and report on those targets on an annual basis.

6.4 In the context of the Scottish Executive's ongoing ethnic minorities research programme (Appendix D) the Forum recommends that the Scottish Executive take the lead in the development of a capacity-building programme involving researchers and advisors from minority ethnic communities and community-led organisations.

6.5 The Forum welcomes the Scottish Executive's commitment to report annually to the Scottish Parliament on its Equality Strategy and recommends that:

• The Scottish Executive take the lead on the development of race equality specific performance indicators and evaluation frameworks to inform the public sector's reporting of progress and implementation of race equality work;
• Scottish Ministers adopt the Forum's 2001 consultation paper proposals on the specific duty to report the results of race equality impact assessment of policies and services and consultations and monitoring of the impacts in policies, services and employment.

6.6 The Forum recommends that the Scottish Executive and all public-sector bodies set out their arrangements for provision of, and access to, translation and interpreting services.

6.7 The Forum encourages the public sector to develop and build on existing good practice, such as the good practice guidelines of the Scottish Forum for Public Service Interpreting and Translating.

6.8 The Forum welcomes and endorses the recommendations of the Macpherson Inquiry on prevention and the role of education and therefore recommends that the Scottish Executive take action to:

• support and develop multi-agency working to ensure an effective, timely and co-ordinated response to racist incidents and racial harassment;
• develop a strategic programme of work on the prevention of racist crime and racial harassment; protection and support for victims; and the provision of effective service responses by all key agencies; and
• develop and support a partnership with minority ethnic communities and public and voluntary sectors at a national and local level to encourage and support ongoing dialogue in all its work in this area.

7 Consultation with Minority Ethnic Communities

Recommendations:

7.1 That the Scottish Executive takes the lead in continuing to support the development of a Scotland-wide database.

7.2 That the Scottish Executive encourages public sector interests including Scottish Executive departments, local authorities, health and community care and housing providers to develop sectoral specific better practice on inclusive events and consultation.

7.3 That as a minimum those responsible for consultation with civic society in whatever sphere need to ensure that:

• the Commission for Racial Equality, Racial Equality Councils, BEMIS, the Scottish Interfaith Council and the Scottish Trades Union Congress Black Workers' Committee are included in all consultations along with all relevant minority ethnic community organisations;
• responses are regularly reviewed throughout the consultation period;
• consideration is given to commissioning and/or funding specific work in communities led by members of the communities themselves; and
• for all consultation and civic participation initiatives, consideration is given to the provision of relevant, accessible information in community languages.

The Forum encourages:

7.4 The Scottish Executive Media and Communication Unit to initiate a specific study on accessible and relevant means of communicating with minority ethnic communities.

7.5 All Departments of the Scottish Executive and organisations to:

• develop awareness of different approaches which might enhance consultation and dialogue;
• involve members of minority ethnic communities in trying out different approaches and evaluating their suitability for different types of policy-making, service design and evaluation of implementation.

8 Next Steps

8.1 The Forum looks to Scottish Executive Ministers to establish quickly:

• arrangements for publication by Departmental Ministers of their initial response to the Forum's report;
• arrangements for the publication by the Scottish Executive of an initial report on work to take forward the commitment to promoting race equality covering the period from publication to autumn 2002 and annually thereafter;
• convene in the winter of 2002/3 a broad ranging conference of minority ethnic communities, statutory agencies, public, private and voluntary sectors to review progress, reaffirm direction and renew the commitment to action; and
• in preparation for the conference, to commission work within minority ethnic communities and mainstream service providers and voluntary sector interests across Scotland in order to assess progress on the strategy and action plans.

8.2 In the course of the Forum's work it has not been possible to address all issues or to incorporate full consideration of the needs of some particular groups such as Gypsies/Travellers, asylum seekers and refugees or those with disabilities.

Therefore the Forum asks the public, private and voluntary sector in taking forward this report, recommendations and proposals for priority actions to have regard to the particular experiences, circumstances and needs of all minority ethnic communities including particular groups such as Gypsies/Travellers, asylum seekers and the religious and faith communities, and:

8.3 encourages all sectors to develop their own dialogue with and within communities as well as with other relevant organisations.

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