Working Towards Equal Chances at Mencap

Mencap’s vision is for a world in which everyone with a learning disability has an equal right to choice, opportunity and respect. We recognise, however, that there are variations in the degree of impact that our work has had on different groups of people over the last 60 years. Black and minority ethnic (BME) communities have been identified as one of four key groups of people that we need worker to engage with in future.

In September 2006, Mencap launched Reaching Out, a report and DVD which highlighted the double-discrimination faced by people with a learning disability and their family carers from black and minority ethnic (BME) backgrounds.

In Reaching Out, Mencap identified changes that all service providers can make to help tackle this double-discrimination, and in particular, changes that Mencap itself wants to make. These include changes to the way we:

• tell people about who we are and what we do
• provide services and support, to make them more culturally sensitive
• work with local and national partners to promote change
• increase the diversity and cultural skills in our workforce
• share good practice about working with different communities

The following are some of the changes we have made over the last 18 months, which collectively we hope will have a big impact on our ability to meet the needs of minority ethnic communities.

We have created a new section of our website with information relating to BME communities. It contains information about Mencap projects and services which are particularly able to meet the needs of diverse communities, as well as some basic information about Mencap that has been translated into 9 languages.

We have also formed an ethnicity network for Mencap staff who work or are seeking to work with BME communities to share good practice and support one another. They also do this through the new ethnicity section of our intranet which contains lots of resources, good practice guidance and links to other sources of information. A comprehensive diversity training programme is also currently under development in order to provide all our staff with the essential awareness and skills they need to be able to effectively support people from different backgrounds.

A diversity audit toolkit has recently been developed, primarily intended for use by our local affiliated groups, in order for them to identify ways in which they could become more accessible and inclusive for BME communities. A similar checklist will be used for planning and reviewing internal activities such as specific projects or events.

Finally, we have formed a partnership with the National Learning Disability and Ethnicity Network (hosted by ARC UK) to look at the translation of learning disability materials. We are jointly hosting a consultation day on May 18 in Birmingham, bringing together other learning disability organisations and key people in the field to look at how collectively we can ensure that there is a consistent translated message about learning disability issues and the values around them.

For further information about this project, or the work around Reaching Out, please contact Lucy Virgo at: lucy.virgo@mencap.org.uk