| 1 |
Background |
| 1.1 |
The Race Relations (Amendment) Act of 2000 put a range of duties on us to promote equal opportunities, good race relations and eliminate discrimination in Sunderland. It specifically required us to monitor certain aspects of our employment practices and to publish the results of that monitoring. This report fulfils that part of our duty by providing information about our employment practices and an analysis of what that information means.
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| 1.2 |
To comply with the act we have been asked to publish the results of our monitoring across the nine areas detailed in the table that accompanies this report. These include monitoring applicants for jobs, promotion, discipline and grievance, training and performance appraisal. All of them are of key importance to employees and we need to be sure that our practices do not disadvantage any particular groups in any way.
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| 1.3 |
In addition, the act recognises that those employees that properly monitor their employment practices and study carefully the data that they get from this monitoring are more likely to create an environment where a mix of people want to work and where services therefore become more sensitive to the needs of different ethnic groups.
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| 2. |
Context |
| 2.1 |
Sunderland is a large city with a relatively low Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) population. The 2001 census indicated that approximately 2% of the total population of some 280,000 belong to a minority ethnic group. This represents a near doubling of the proportion belonging to these groups since the 1991 census.
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| 3. |
The Data |
| 3.1 |
This is the third year that we have published this
information. The results
of the last 2 years’ monitoring are available for comparison here:
2003-2004
2004-2005 |
| 3.2 |
It should be noted that this is the last year for which joint monitoring of this data will take place for Children’s and Adult Services. During the course of the last year, these services have split and any published monitoring will be carried out separately in future. It will therefore be a little while before meaningful comparisons can be made between the annual monitoring figures from next year.
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| 4. |
Overview of Social Services Workforce |
| 4.1 |
During 2005/6, we employed some 3477 staff, 77 [2.2%] of whom are known to be from a BME background. This compares with a figure of 3.8% for 2004/5.
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| 4.2 |
At first glance it may appear that we have lost ground from our position last year. While it is true to say that the proportion of BME employees within Social Services has fallen, there are some clear reasons for this:Firstly, there has been an overall reduction in the number of staff we employ. This has been mainly caused by the low levels of recruitment due to the ongoing re-organisation of services and the fact that a number of our services are now provided by partners in the Independent and Voluntary sectors rather than directly by us.
Secondly, we have rationalised our panel of Interpreters and Translators, removing a number who had not actually been required to do any work for us for a considerable period of time. This was achieved voluntarily with the agreement of those concerned. Because most of the Interpreters and Translators are from a BME background and because we have small overall numbers of BME employees, this has had a significant effect on our figures. It has, however had very little impact on the ‘real’ make up of our workforce. It is also worth noting that we have tackled the issue identified last year in respect of not knowing the ethnic background of all our staff.
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| 5. |
Current Staff Profile and Directorate Performance |
| 5.1 |
Appendix
1 ( pdf 61kb) shows a breakdown of all the results of our workforce monitoring in respect of BME Groups across 8 of the 9 areas for the year ending 31 March 2006. The one area in which we have been unable to produce figures this year is in respect of applicants for promotion. Our records have simply been unable to produce this data though we do hope that the introduction of the Council’s new HR and Payroll system will facilitate this in future years.
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5.2
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Of the 3831 applicants for jobs during the year, 5% were from BME backgrounds. This is the same figure as we recorded for 2003/4.
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5.3
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There were 3477 staff members employed by Social Services by the end of March 2005, 2.2% from a BME background compared to 3.8% last year.
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5.4
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During the year there were 5547 applications for training. Of those, 2.8% were from BME staff. 2.6% of the 5007 staff who received training during the year were from BME groups. These figures exceeded the proportion of BME employees in the workforce and to this extent give us no causes for concern. However we are still unable to identify the ethnic background of a significant number of applicants for and recipients of our training and this is an area in which we will need to seek to improve if we are to be confident that access to training is fair and equal for all employees.
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5.5
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As noted above, we have been unable to collect data this year on applications for promotion due to some deficiencies in our recording systems.
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| 5.6 |
Sunderland Social Services operates an appraisal scheme with each employee being appraised at least once a year. However, appraisals are not generally the forum for decisions about promotion or levels of pay. Rather they focus on training and development needs, work issues and aspirations.
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| 5.7 |
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| 5.8 |
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| 5.9 |
There were 551 staff who left their jobs with Sunderland Social Services last year, of those 6.2% (34) were known to be from BME backgrounds. The removal from the Payroll of a number of unused Interpreters and Translators mentioned earlier accounts for this seemingly high figure.
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| 6 |
Conclusions |
| 6.1 |
As we have indicated in previous monitoring reports, Sunderland Social Services takes equality and diversity very seriously in both its activities as an employer and as a provider/commissioner of services. As well as the monitoring activities described above, we have also taken a number of other steps to further improve our performance in respect of Race Equality. These include:
· We have completed a series of Equality Impact Assessments across most of our services and we now have in place a set of prioritised action plans to improve and develop our equality practices in key areas of our work
· We have published our first Diversity Plan and this will be updated with the plans developed from our impact assessment work
· We have held an Awareness Raising event for BME Groups at the local Bangladeshi Community Centre and intend to hold another similar event at another venue this year. These activities also serve to build our relationships with BME representative groups
· We have carried out and published the results of a small scale research project on the views, needs and aspirations of BME Groups in Sunderland
· We have continued to develop our in-house Interpretation and Translation Service, ‘Language Point'. |
| 6.2 |
The results of this year’s monitoring do give us some cause for continued optimism that we are making improvements in our practice and performance in respect of race equality. We have managed to maintain an improved level of applications for jobs from members of the BME Community and the proportion of the existing workforce from a BME background continues to exceed that in the local population. We have achieved this despite low levels of recruitment, a fall in the overall size of the workforce and the one-off reduction in the Interpreter/Translator group.
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| 6.3 |
We will need to look carefully at the way we record the ethnicity of those who apply for and attend training, as there are a significant number of people whom this information is simply unknown. This makes wholly accurate monitoring of the situation problematic. Similarly we will need to find a way to collect the required data about applicants for promotion.
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| 6.4 |
Overall, however, the figures do not indicate any significant causes for concern. Indeed, there are indications that we are making progress and that our challenge will be to sustain this over the coming years.
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| 7 |
Further Information |
| 7.1 |
For further information about our workforce monitoring or any other equality/diversity issues in Social Services please contact:
Policy and Development Manager
Social Services
50 Fawcett Street
Sunderland
SR1 1RF
Tel: 0191 5661626
Email: policy&devunit@ssd.sunderland.gov.uk |
