Equality impact assessment voice and influence team delivery

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1. What is the name of the function, policy or service that is being assessed?

Voice and Influence Team delivery.

2. What are the aims of the function, policy or service? How do they relate to the departmental objectives in the Service Plan? Whose needs it is designed to meet? What are the current priorities?

The Youth Development Service designs and delivers with young people, programmes of informal educational activity that provide opportunities for them to:

• develop their physical, intellectual, moral, spiritual, social and emotional capabilities;
• identify and accept their responsibilities as individuals, group members and citizens;
• understand and act upon the personal and social issues which affect their lives - those of others and the communities of which they are a part.

The Service activities provide informal learning through high quality youth work designed to achieve the standards and targets identified within Transforming Youth Work: Resourcing Excellent Youth Services.

3. In what ways might this function, policy or service affect some groups of people differently? Might some groups find it harder to access the service? Do some groups have particular needs that are not well met by the current policy or service? Consider all six equality strands: race, gender, disability, sexual orientation, religion/belief, age.

Black and Ethnic Minority Young People

• The school selection process for deciding which young people will attend events is an area currently out of our sphere of influence.
• There is a feeling amongst young people who are member of existing groups i.e. WAY/YPC that they can represent BME young people adequately already
• Weakness of the democratic process in general – the majority of young people in Wiltshire are likely to vote for a white western candidate rather than a Black or Asian candidate due to a sense of ‘cultural familiarity/identity’

Young Parents

• Lack of understanding relating to the issues faced by young parents from other young people poses a barrier.
• Issues surrounding child care – There is a current expectation that transport will be provided for young people to attend meetings etc. which does not extend to the provision of childcare at present.

Disabled Young People

• Schools block access
• Materials we create/provide can be quite complex or involve a lot of reading – this can exclude those young people with learning and behavioural difficulties who may struggle with reading or can only concentrate for short periods of time e.g. those with ADHD.
• Providing information in other formats such as braille could assist some young people.

Sexual Orientation

• Lack of understanding within the group – use of derogatory language can isolate those individuals who may have issues regarding their sexuality.

Class

• Perceptions about what the work we do involves may pose a barrier to those young people who are not academic or find school and education difficult, or those young people who are NEET.
• There is am underlying sense among group members that being elected onto WAY or standing on the YPC gives them elevated status. The make up of the group at present reinforces that in general as the majority are academic achievers, have stable home lives and have ready access to money/materials.

4. What evidence do you have for your judgement? Is there evidence of public concern (e.g. complaints)? Have staff raised concerns? Is there local or national research to indicate that there could be a problem?

• Observations of group dynamics
• Discussion with young people
• Statistics for events
• Reporting from other agencies
• Enquiries from parents

5. How and with whom have you consulted with as part of your assessment? What were the results? Have you published the results of that consultation? If so, where?

• Young people
• Doreen Baidoo – BME Trainer / Consultant
• Youth Workers
• Other agencies – Schools, WREC

6. If you have found that the function, policy or service might have an adverse or disproportionate impact on a particular group of people, can you justify this?

The number of white candidates elected to representative groups can in part be justified due to the weakness of the democratic process – for elected groups like WAY people will vote for those who appear most similar to themselves i.e. by sticking to their own (perceived) ethnic groups, classes, age .

7. If the impact cannot be justified, what do you intend to do about this? Are there changes that you could introduce which would make the function, policy or service work better for this group of people? Is further research or consultation required?

• More training with young people to be undertaken around issues of race and ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, class and young parents.
• Secondments and co-options on WAY.
• Redeveloping how elections are promoted and changing the nature of the promotion material e.g. no longer using photographs of young people on election posters.
• Accessibility of buildings – ensure all buildings used are accessible.
• Format and content of information and promotional materials to be revised.
• Development of targeted work aimed at hard to reach categories of young people – focus on BME, disabilities and looked after young people in the first instance.
• Building better and long term links with special needs schools and the YPSS.

8. How will you monitor the take-up or impact of the function, policy or service in future?

• Annual review of all statistics of our work including numbers of young people, ethnicity, disability and gender.
• Regular review of work undertaken by the Voice and Influence Team at each monthly team meeting.
• Recording of statistics for all WYPOF applications and submission of this information to GOSW.
• Election posters have been changed for the 07/08 election year.

9. What actions do you plan to take as a result of this equality impact assessment? Please state any resource implications

• Two co-opted positions have been developed for young WAY – one for a young person representing disabled YP and one for a young person representing BME young people in Wiltshire.
• A residential and follow up sessions have been developed targeting young people from BME, looked after and disability groups.  The aim of the residential is to provide support, tools and information about current consultation and democratic processes these YP could be a part of and to discuss whether this meets their needs or further services / structures need to be created.  All this work had received funding but will use staff members from the Children’s Rights office and the Voice and Influence team.
• Joint sessions have been run and future sessions are planned to help young people examine issues around equal opportunity and representation.  
• A new monitoring and evaluation form has been developed by the Voice and Influence team to ensure the capture of appropriate equal opportunities information at all events and sessions undertaken.

10. There is a legal requirement to publish the outcomes of Equality Impact Assessments. Please outline how / where this will happen

Through the Equality and Diversity Officer the documentation will be put on the web site.

11. Name of person completing form

Head of Youth Development

Date assessment completed

1 March 07

12. Senior manager approval

Assistant Director Resources, Improvement and Young People

Date

7 December 2007

Last updated: 14 May 2009