Looking back at the (new) legislation and our own strategies, policies and targets, its easy to get bogged down in this subject and I can see why some housing professionals can't see the wood for the trees. It's easy to make tools like equality impact assessments, even though they are no longer a formal requirement, a tick box exercise and a lesson in maximum bureaucracy. Similarly endless training and E&D awareness raising for tenant leaders, staff and contractors can run the risk of patronising or boring people to the extent that they just turn off. Statistics are also difficult: do lower satisfaction rates for Black Minority Ethnic (BME) tenants reflect a poorer service or the fact that most BME tenants are younger with higher expectations?
So in preparation for our assessment, I spent a bit of time looking at the effect of all this activity on the community and trying to judge whether we are really making a difference. I am genuinely moved by some of the real life examples:
- Two colleagues from our in-house repairs team were mending a chimney. They realised the tenant was anxious about mess and spotted she had breathing difficulties - so made extra effort to avoid anything coming down the chimney. They ended up hoovering the house and collecting her prescription!
- Linda Evans, one of our Priority Management Officers, some years back learnt British Sign Language to better support tenants. On a recent secondment to lettings, she signed up a couple who are both hearing impaired. They have six children and had been successful in their bid for a larger family home. Lo and behold, this couple turned out to be Linda's BSL teachers.
- Tenants at our recent Get Togethers were moved by a brief three act "play" which portrayed how hate crime can affect people. At the start of the events, only a handful of people would report harassment or hate crime - by the end over 70% felt they would have the confidence to tell us.
