Camden publishes report outlining work to tackle racial inequalities & the disproportionate impacts of Covid-19 in the borough
Last year, Camden Council launched ‘Building Equal Foundations’, a report which set out a programme of work to address the unequal impacts of Covid-19 on Black, Asian and other ethnic minority residents.
Published in August 2020, the report outlined 140 actions alongside partners, community groups and services across Camden to tackle racial inequalities and ensure Black, Asian and other ethnic minority communities could be protected from the immediate and long-term impacts of the pandemic.
A year later and Camden has now published ‘Building Equal Foundations: One Year On” which goes into detail about what has been achieved and the actions taken so far to tackle inequalities across education, health, adult social care, employment and housing.
Some of the key actions taken in the last year include:
- Working with the Black Curriculum, a social enterprise that delivers Black British History to young people in the UK, to review the curriculum of schools in Camden.
- Raising over £64,000 to distribute laptops to children without access to a device.
- Officially renaming Cecil Rhodes House and Beckford School.
- Publishing a Memorandum of Understanding for Zero Tolerance of racist abuse across Camden’s Adult Social Care settings.
- Providing further support for Voluntary and Community Sector organisations in Camden to help residents who have been impacted by the pandemic.
- Introducing a virtual work experience programme for Black, Asian and other ethnic pupils.
- Partnering with Black Pound Day to support and boost Black-owned businesses in the borough.
- Creating a vaccine bus to complete outreach work within communities and target locations in the borough with low vaccine uptake.
- Introducing training and mentoring programmes to support Black, Asian and other ethnic children into science, technology, engineering, arts and math (STEAM) careers.
The ‘Building Equal Foundations’ report has given new strength and energy to our local movement for equality which I feel has created genuine, lasting change in Camden.
I’m so proud to see the progress we have made so far and to witness the growing desire for equality and justice across the borough. However, there remains a lot of work to do, and we must continue our work to dismantle structural inequalities, both internally in the organisation and externally in the Camden community. We are fully committed to continuing and accelerating our work to tackle inequality and disproportionality over the coming year.
The new report also goes into detail about the next steps which will be taken to continue this work, including introducing an overarching Equalities and Disproportionality Strategy for the Council and continuing work around ensuring Camden’s public realm is inclusive and representative of all communities.
For more information and to read the full report, please head to: camden.gov.uk/buildingequalfoundations
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