ACERT – Page 51 – Advisory Council for the Education of Romany and other Travellers

ROMED Intercultural Mediation Training in the UK

For some time a number of local authorities and other public bodies have recognised the value of employing people from Gypsy and Traveller backgrounds. The idea is to break down barriers and improve trust between official institutions and the people that they are here to serve. There are teachers and teaching assistants, home school liaison officers, youth workers, police officers, health workers, adult basic skills workers and social workers, often working with the whole population, and with a specific remit to promote the inclusion of their own communities. More recently schools, police forces, fire services and councils have recruited Roma from Eastern Europe to carry out similar roles. With the reduction in local authority budgets, voluntary sector organisations have increasingly developed an advocacy and liaison role. Some of these organisations are community led and their staff are often called upon to intervene in order to improve relations with service providers.

The Council of Europe, with funding from the European Union, has developed a training programme that has been designed for community members whose work, either paid or voluntary, involves them in some way in intercultural mediation. This programme is called ROMED. By participating in seven days of training with Council of Europe trainers and completing a six month work based assignment participants can gain the ROMED certificate.

The ROMED training is highly participative with much group work, role play and discussion as well as some theory. Topics covered include stereotyping, prejudice, discrimination, dealing with critical incidents, human rights, conflict management, assessment, planning, evaluations and the European Code of Ethics for Roma mediators. The intention of the training is to equip the trainees to act impartially to help develop the confidence of public institutions and community members in liaising directly with one another. This in turn will help to improve fair access to services and participation by everyone on a more equal footing.

The UK government agreed to join the ROMED training programme in 2012. The course has run twice now with ACERT (the Advisory Council for the Education of Romany and other Travellers) acting as the UK National Focal Point, responsible for organising the training courses , recruiting and supporting the trainees and reporting back to the Council of Europe. So far 35 UK based trainees have been awarded the ROMED certificate. This group includes people from a wide range of Traveller, Gypsy and Roma backgrounds who are living and working in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. A number of the participants from the first course supported those in the second cohort, two of them acting as co-trainers.

ACERT will circulate enquiries from organisations and local authorities seeking to use the services of a ROMED trained mediator. We would also be willing to support local authorities seeking to organise intercultural mediator training for people from their local communities.

For further information contact

info@acert.org.uk

www.acert.org.uk

https://www.facebook.com/romed.mediators?fref=ts

https://romed.coe-romct.org/romed-curriculum

Pickles discriminates against Gypsies and Travellers – official

Mr Justice Gilbart, in a judgment handed down on 21 January 2015, found that Eric Pickles, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government breached the Equality Act 2010 and of Article 6 of the European Convention of Human Rights. The case involved two Romani Gypsies applying for planning permission for single pitch sites for themselves and their families in the Green Belt. The local planning authorities ( Bromley and Dartford ) refused them planning permission. They appealed to a Planning Inspector but the Secretary of State decided to make the decisions himself because the appeals involved “a traveller site in the Green Belt.”

The judgement said, “These are not to be dismissed as technical breaches. Although the issue of unlawful discrimination was put before the Minister by his officials, no attempt was made by the Minister to follow the steps required of him by statute, nor was the regard required of him by Section 149 of the Equality Act 2010 had to the matters set out there.”

The Article 6 challenge succeeded because substantial delays have occurred in dealing with the appeals. In the context of delay, Article 6 of the ECHR does no more than encapsulate the long standing principle of the common law that justice should not be unreasonably delayed, as it was and has been here.

The implications of this judgment are enormous. The vast majority of all Gypsy and Traveller planning appeals that were recovered since the July 2013, when the change of policy was announced may now be challengeable due to the fact that the practice of the policy was unlawful and discriminates against Gypsies and Travellers, fails to have regard to the Public Sector Equality Duty and has caused unreasonable delays in terms of Article 6 of the ECHR. In future the Secretary of State will not be able to intervene in this way.

Congratulation to the Community Law Partnerships who ran the cases. Commenting in response to this ruling, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, who intervened in the case, said:

“We have a duty to protect everyone from discrimination and ensure that the law is applied fairly, consistently and equally for all.

“We understand the need to be sensitive about green belt development but this should not be used to single out individuals for unlawful discrimination.

“Planning decisions should be taken on the merits of an application, not the characteristics of the applicant.”

What Coalition commitments?

The ministerial working group on Gypsies and Travellers has not met since April 2012 and is not scheduled to meet in the future, the government has been forced to admit.

05/11/2014 – The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) was ordered to publish information about the group, which is chaired by secretary of state for communities Eric Pickles, by the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) last month.

This followed allegations the department was ‘stonewalling’ about the progress of the group, which was set up to tackle inequalities faced by Gypsies and Travellers.

Charity Friends, Family and Travellers (FFT) submitted a request to DCLG under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) asking how many times the group has met since April 2012 and how often it is scheduled to meet in the next six months.

The ministerial working group published a report in 2012 outlining 28 commitments to improve services for Gypsies and Travellers. FFT made the FOIA request because it was not convinced the group was meeting or doing any work to achieve these goals.

Share your opinion on: https://romadebates.wordpress.com/2014/11/13/ministerial-interest/

Ofsted recommends more support for Roma pupils

Overcoming barriers: ensuring that Roma children are fully engaged and achieving in education has said that children from Roma backgrounds must be better supported to learn and achieve, after figures revealed the number of “Gypsy/Roma” pupils enrolling in English schools increased by 13.7% to 19,030 over the past year. The watchdog surveyed three local councils and 11 schools with a large intake of Roma pupils from Eastern Europe. Although head teachers reported no adverse effect on the achievement of other pupils already in their schools, some schools had struggled to get pupils to follow school routines and behave appropriately. Ofsted recommends that local authorities should ensure that there is a dedicated and knowledgeable senior leader who can push forward the local authority’s strategies for improving outcomes for Roma pupils. The report went on to note that some schools have felt obliged to meet the costs of lunches, uniforms and trips for Roma pupils despite not receiving funding to do so.

Some key points noted by ACERT include:

Strategies for including Roma are the same as used by Traveller Education Support Services and highlighted in the National Strategies Guidance, NFER research etc.
A few schools seem to have had a significant numbers, but overall there is nothing in the report to justify scare stories in some sections of the press.
Case Studies are provided from Manchester, but not Derby and Sheffield. Other case studies come from schools in Leicester and Kent (not in the focus areas of the survey)
There is strong endorsement of specialist support services and a powerful quote from a Roma support worker confirming the value of proactive rather than reactive interventions.
It mentions the problems for the schools and families resulting from their ineligibility for Pupil Premium.
There is also support for induction by high quality experienced qualified specialist teachers, and explicit criticism of Teaching Assistant led classes.
Concerns were raised about high levels of mobility, coordination across agencies and monitoring within schools.