Join us to stop hate crime in Wolverhampton

You may be remember last year I wrote this post about a series of Get Togethers we held to ask tenants about hate crime.

At those events, tenants told us that people didn’t know what hate crime or hate incidents were and those that did know said they wouldn’t want to report it. They also said that we needed to do more to raise awareness.

So today, we’re launching a year-long campaign called Stop Hate in Wolverhampton. We’re asking you to join us and pledge to stop hate. Please sign up to our pledge, like our facebook page and show your support on your social media profile with a twibbon.

Hate crime is when people are abused through a perceived prejudice on the part of the perpetrator. It can be linked to disability, sexuality, age, race, gender or ethnicity. Only 18 hate crimes were reported to Wolverhampton Homes last year and nationally, it is thought that for every hate crime that is reported, eight go un-reported.

Hate crime can include physical assault or even murder, but can also include verbal attacks, graffiti or vandalism.

You may not realise but the majority of hate crimes happen near to the victim's home while they are going about their daily business and most hate crime perpetrators live in the same neighborhood as their victims.

That’s really a startling thought – just where people should feel safest – in their own neighbourhood is where they are most likely to suffer hate crime.

Our tenants are adamant that we must do more to ensure people know what hate crime is and that we do all we can to stop it happening.

Please join us and pledge to Stop Hate in Wolverhampton.

Facts and figures you may not know about hate crime:

• Figures released by the police in 2010 showed an increase in the amount of recorded hate crime last year, including a near doubling of disability hate crime.
• There were 52,028 reported hate crimes last year up on an estimated 46,300 in 2008. Disability hate crimes increased from 800 to 1,402 over the same period.  However, according to 'Stop Hate UK' over 80% of all hate crimes are not reported to the police.
• More than half (56 per cent) of the disabled people in Scope’s online sample said they had experienced hostility, aggression or violence from a stranger because of their condition or impairment (Scope, 2011).
• Sixteen per cent of almost 2,000 people with learning disabilities who responded to a Community Care survey in 2007 said they had been bullied on the street in the previous year.
• Research by the mental health charity Mind in 2007 showed that 71 per cent of respondents had been victimised in the community at least once in the past two years and felt this to be related to their mental health history.
• Around 40 per cent of LGB people say they are worried about being the victim of a crime (Homophobic Hate Crime, 2008).
• The findings from Homophobic Hate Crime, 2008 suggest that one in eight of lesbians and gay men and one in 20 bisexuals had experienced a hate crime or incident in the year to February 2008.
• Disabled people being four times more likely to be the victim of a crime than other people and twice as likely to be the victim of a violent attack.

2011 was a good year because...

• We delivered another year of our Decent Homes programme on time and in budget. Having got one of the highest allocations of money from the Government, we are now tackling some of the city's biggest housing problems - including Wednesfield tower blocks. And it has an added benefit: our work has trained more than l20 apprentices with National Skills Academy for Construction saying that we have achieved more employment and training outcomes than the Olympics. Have a look at some pictures of our wonderful apprentices on facebook.
• We decided to make our staff as much of a priority as our tenants. Major new projects were delegated to managers to lead cross service groups to tackle emerging issues with a joined up approach. We applied to be a Sunday Times Top 100 company and gave decision-making on reward and recognition to our staff. I walked the job with some 200 staff because "from behind a desk is a dangerous place to view the world" (John le Carre). I learnt loads.
• We heard about new government policy to reduce benefits and to encourage people into smaller accommodation. We started informing tenants many of whom reacted with fear and apprehension, and not a little anger. We were pleased when the Council said it would not be using flexible tenancies which could lead to reassessments every few years. We agree better use needs to be made of the housing stock so we started a system of assisted exchanges - helping the overcrowded swap with the under occupying, with amazingly good results.   
• We represented all ALMOs with senior politicians and housing experts when our chair Sue Roberts was elected the chair of the National Federation of ALMOs, feeling proud to showcase the ALMO movement from around the country. We also basked in Sue's glory when she collected her MBE for services to social housing from the Queen in the summer.
• We took an appropriate and proportionate approach to Wolverhampton tenants involved in this summer's disturbances which primarily resulted in tough warnings.
• We became more confident in the detailed information we hold about the housing stock...so we can help the Council and tenants make decisions about how to use the self financed housing revenue account. We also improved our data on health and safety particularly asbestos and confirmed through audits that our fire safety and other regimes are as good as they can be. 
• We celebrated our journey towards greater value for money. When the ALMO was born, most services cost more than average and were poorer than average quality. After five years of hard work, independently verified data now shows almost every services is lower cost than average and were better quality than average. Don't it make you feel good!
• At last, we are able to use some of the £2m a year value for money savings on the frontline services that people want - new fences, bringing empty homes back into use, minor works that tenants chose for themselves and garage improvements. That's been the most satisfying thing of all!

What have been your highlights of 2011?

Equality and Diversity - just about meeting people's needs

This week Wolverhampton Homes has invited five peer experts to assess whether our work on equality and diversity is achieving results. It's an entirely voluntary process, but I think that unless what we do is achieving more equality and fairness in housing, then we are wasting our time and should go back to the drawing board.

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.

I think in future I will encourage and support equality and diversity more by showing how it might just be about meeting ordinary peoples' needs and going the extra mile to meet individual circumstances! I will let you know the results of our assessment.