Safe Communities Initiative

This section of the website highlights the main points learned from the CRE's Safe Communities Initiative (SCI).

This three-year project, which ran from March 2003, was set up to provide information and advice on promoting good community relations, and to help prevent and resolve disputes or tensions as early as possible.

SCI's work centred on developing and supporting good practice in five cities: Glasgow, Birmingham, Leicester, London (specifically, Tower Hamlets) and Wrexham. It focused on six themes:

• Racial hatred
• Youth cohesion
• Gypsy and Travellers
• Asylum and immigration
• Faith communities
• Media impact
• More about the Safe Communities Initiative

One of the CRE's aims in setting up the initiative was to encourage people to acknowledge, discuss and appreciate their differences, and to prevent relations between communities, and individuals, being harmed by ignorance, prejudice or fear.

Defeating organised racial hatred information pack

The information pack is the culmination of a process which began with a national conference in Birmingham in March 2005, 'Defeating Organised Racial Hatred: Producing safe communities', attended by race equality professionals from statutory, community and voluntary sector organisations.

The conference identified a need for clear information about the use of the law as a tool in combating organised racist groups. The complete information pack can be downloaded as an Adobe Acrobat (pdf) file:

• Defeating Organised Racial Hatred information pack

Individual sections from the pack can also be downloaded from the right-hand side of this page.

Case studies

The case studies listed below follow the progress of ten separate projects SCI was involved in. They explain why each project was set up, what they achieved and how they achieved it. The case studies also draw out the learning points for anyone interested in running similar projects.

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What were the main lessons learned from this initiative?

Overall, the case studies show that there is no single model or solution to planning for, managing and resolving community tensions and that a successful project depends on understanding, and working within, the local context. However, there were a number of factors which were common to all the case studies:

a) Building a strong partnership

The most successful projects were founded on a strong partnership between local agencies and the Safe Communities Initiative team.

Local agencies, such as local authorities, police forces, community groups, local faith and inter-faith organisations and racial equality councils, bring knowledge of the local circumstances, contacts in the communities and legitimacy to working in the local area. The Safe Communities Initiative Team contributed their experience from working with a variety of areas and knowledge of the national policy perspective. Both contributions were important to achieving the aims of each project.

The local agencies which can help you manage community tensions will vary from project to project and area to area. It will be helpful to think carefully at the beginning of your project about who you want to work with and what you expect them to contribute.

b) Facilitating dialogue

Nearly every project began simply with getting people round the table. In some cases these were people in conflict with each other, in others they were workers from local agencies. Discussion was the first step towards breaking down barriers between people, building partnerships and identifying solutions to the conflict.

The dialogue was facilitated by a variety of people, some local and some from outside the area. These included a trained mediator, a police officer, a faith leader, the editor of a local newspaper and members of the SCI team.

When arranging opportunities for dialogue, think carefully about who facilitates it. Who will people listen to, who will people trust and who has the necessary mediation skills and training?

c) Employing an 'honest broker'

The SCI team was often welcomed by local areas as an honest broker. They were able to bring a new perspective to the conflict, partly because they had not been involved in the build up of the tensions. They were seen as a trusted third party with the ability to bring people together.

Being part of the Commission for Racial Equality was often helpful to the SCI team as it meant that they were seen as race equality experts. SCI also found it useful to remind public authorities of their duty to promote race equality - and particularly good race relations - under the Race Relations Act. Sometimes SCI was an effective honest broker simply because they provided an extra resource in times of difficulty.

When working with local agencies and communities to manage conflict, think about the resources and levers you can use, such as reminding organisations of their legal duties or bringing in an outsider who is able to cast a 'fresh eye' over the situation.

d) Finding practical solutions

Working to resolve community tensions needed careful consideration about the opinions and feelings of groups in conflict with each other. Many of the projects gave people the chance to talk about these in a safe environment. However, the best projects went further and also looked at finding practical solutions to the root causes of the tensions.

Conflicts will often need you to create a 'safe space' where people can disagree with each other and air their feelings but sometimes this can develop into a 'talking shop'. Make sure you also think about the practical action which local people and workers can take.

e) Taking a long term approach

The involvement of the SCI team was often a single step in a long journey. Tensions were not always resolved but processes for managing tensions and building good community relations were put in place and difficult questions were asked openly for the first time. As the Safe Communities Initiative could only get involved in areas for a short period of time, they had to make sure that local agencies could carry on the work which they started and this needed planning and agreement from the beginning of the project.

It is important to make sure your partners understand the scope of your project from the beginning. You will need to be clear about the resources and time you have and how you will know when your project is successful. You might find it helpful to design an 'exit strategy' to make sure that your achievements aren't lost when the project ends.

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Opportunities for developing integration work

The CRE's vision for an integrated society is based on three principles:

• Equality: everyone is treated equally and has a right to fair outcomes, and no-one should expect privileges because of what they are;
• Participation: all groups in society should expect to share in how we make decisions, but also expect to carry the responsibilities of making society work; and
• Interaction: no-one should be trapped within their own community and in the truly integrated society who people work with or the friendships they make should not be constrained by race or ethnicity.

The SCI projects looked mostly at preventing or resolving community conflict. However, many also promoted interaction between people from different backgrounds, leading to better community relations. This resulted in local agencies and people who were willing and able to tackle community tensions before they escalated into conflict.

Four SCI case studies describe projects promoting interaction:

Learning Lessons in Wrexham
Several interventions were put in place following the disorder involving Iraqi Kurd and Welsh residents on the Caia Park Estate in June 2003. One of them, the Multicultural Group, brings together people from different backgrounds for a meal where each person contributes a dish from their country of origin. It provides an informal chance for local residents to meet and learn about each others' cultural backgrounds.

Southampton Youth Cohesion Conference
The primary aim of the Southampton Youth Cohesion Conference was to listen to the views of young people about youth conflict in Southampton. However the conference also brought together 117 young people from different backgrounds and gave them a chance to interact and talk about living in Southampton. Many of the young people spoke frankly about their experiences of racism.

Working with Travellers in Cottenham
A large number of Irish Travellers settled in Cottenham over a short period of time causing concern to local people, some of whom made allegations that the Travellers were responsible for antisocial behaviour and bad driving. The local vicar brought members of the settled and Traveller communities together in a joint Church of England - Roman Catholic Church Service. This was followed by coffee mornings bringing around 12 members of each community together to discuss their concerns in an informal setting.

Youth Mentoring in Tower Hamlets
The youth mentoring project run by JP Morgan, a leading global financial services firm, brought together a group of 25 young people from different backgrounds and different schools on a regular basis to set up a community project. Although initially the young people associated mainly with others from their own school, they soon began mixing with each other and, without diversity or race being explicitly on the agenda, they came to find out more about each other.

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