The Board was reminded that the Tower Hamlets Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Inequalities Commission health recommendations and action plan was brought to the Health and Wellbeing Board on the 21^st of September 2021. Nine of the twenty-three recommendations made by the Commission had related to health and wellbeing and the immediate priorities for delivery had been discussed further at the Board on the 2^nd of November (following agreement of recommendations at Cabinet on the 27^th of October) The report presented to the Board provided an outline of the progress, plans and areas of challenge for delivery against these recommendation.  A summary of the mains points arising from discussions on the presentation has been summarised below:

The Board:

v  Noted that the recommendations for Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic groups are interrelated to campaigns, communications, research, codesigned services, digital exclusion, clinical training, hostile environment, partnership, representation.

v  Noted that at this point, progress links primarily to existing pandemic related work, specifically, pandemic work focussed on Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic communities continues including the multilingual vaccine helpline, Covid Champions and outreach work targeted at Bangladeshi, Somali, Black African Caribbean, and Black African communities.  In addition, the research work to understand health inequalities at a deeper level amongst Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic communities and coproduce ways forward has now been commissioned and will complete over the next two months.

v  Understood that capacity to take forward the communications and campaigns recommendations has been identified through a full-time fixed term post which will focus particularly on recommendations around ensuring communications messages and materials are available and culturally appropriate linking to the research findings as well as the campaigns work.

v  Having considered the recommendations around digital exclusion facing Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic communities indicate that a more strategic approach is required and agreed that it was important to ensure alignment with the wider measures of the overall digital inclusion plan and that specific equalities considerations needs to be at the heart of the Boroughs Health and Well-Being Strategy to address inequalities in Tower Hamlets and provide a platform to ensure equalities remains at the forefront of the Boards collective work.

In conclusion, the Chair thanked all those attendees for a very positive discussion that had helped to understand health inequalities at a deeper level amongst Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic communities and the specific equalities considerations that will need to be at the heart of the Boroughs Health and Well-Being Strategy.

The Board noted that the Tower Hamlets Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Inequalities Commission health recommendations and action plan had been considered by the Health and Wellbeing Board on the 21st of September 2021. The main points of the discussion and questions raised summarised as follows.

v  Noted that nine of the twenty-three recommendations made by the Commission relate to health and wellbeing.

v  Noted that the report sets out the progress and immediate priorities for delivery against the Health Theme of the action plan.

v  Indicated that it would wish to see some hypothesis to be developed now about addressing people's lives within structural, social, and contexts, and social change. e.g., the list of 10 things for the next 9 months to 5 years, 5 to 18, adulthood, people living with long term conditions; complex care and driving out inequalities.

v  Agreed things that such research must involve people in the community and must build on the work that has been undertaken since the start of the pandemic e.g., through the delivery of services in which residents participate in the creation, design, steering, and management of services.

v  Indicated that with vaccine hesitancy continuing to present significant obstacles partners need to have programmes to maintain the public’s trust in the partnership, based on local needs with data broken down for agencies to find out better ways to manage the challenges and situations presented by Covid.

v  Noted the work being taken forward at London level by Kevin Fenton the Regional Director of Public Health, NHS London that has indicated that stakeholders have expressed deep concern and anxiety that if lessons are not learnt from this initial phase of the epidemic, future waves of the disease could again have severe and disproportionate impacts. Accordingly, agencies need to be united in the commitment that urgent, collaborative, and decisive action is required to avoid a repeat of this in the future i.e., the members of the Health and Well-Being Board will continue to gather insights on the experience of Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic communities in relation to the Covid.

Accordingly, the Board formally:

1. Noted current progress and plans for delivery against recommendations in 2021/22.
2. Considered the equalities considerations as set out in Paragraph 4.1 of the report.
3. Indicated how agencies should be taking forward research on causes of inequalities in Black Asian and Minority Ethnic Communities.

The Pre-Decision Scrutiny Questions and officer responses were noted.

DECISION

1.    To agree the council’s commitments to the anti-racist pledge and note that the actions will be reviewed and updated through on-going appraisal of progress (Appendix 2 to the report).

2.    To agree the actions set out in the Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Inequalities Commission Action Plan and note that the actions will be reviewed and updated through on-going appraisal of progress (Appendix 2 to the report).

3.    To agree to create a £1m reserve to provide the funding needed to deliver the programme set out in the action plan. This will be in addition to the use of £595,000 from existing budgets, bringing the total for delivering the attached action plan to £1,582,691.

4.    To agree to delegate authority to the Corporate Director – Resources to approve funding requests for individual projects from the newly created reserve, following consultation with the Director Strategy, Improvement and Transformation.

Action by:

CHIEF EXECUTIVE (W. TUCKLEY)

(Director strategy, improvement and transformation (S. Godman)

(Head of Corporate Strategy and Policy (A. Hoque)

Reasons for Decision

This report sets out an ambitious action plan to address the findings and

recommendations of the Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Inequalities

Commission. It follows conversations with our partners and builds on our

commitment to tackle inequalities faced by our Black, Asian and Minority

Ethnic residents. It includes investment of £1,582,691 to deliver the action

plan.

Alternative Options

Cabinet could choose not to agree the action plan, but this is not

recommended. The actions address specific areas of need and inequalities

faced by our Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic residents, and are supported

by a robust evidence base.

Councillor Asma Begum, Deputy Mayor and Cabinet Member for Children, Youth Services, Education and Equalities introduced the report that presented the cabinet’s initial action plan in response to the 23 recommendations made in the Tower Hamlets Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Inequalities Commission.

Councillor Begum noted that the report presented a marker for future transformative work and for relentlessly challenging race inequality. Accordingly, the ambitious action plan would be supported by funding of £1.5million.

Councillor Candida Ronald, Cabinet Member for Resources and the Voluntary Sector explained how the Council would be transforming its organisational culture in response to the Commission’s recommendations. The council will invest funding to ensure race inequality is discussed and addressed at all levels of the organisation and with partners

Councillor Rachel Blake, Deputy Mayor and Cabinet Member for Adults, Health and Wellbeing explained how the Council would be addressing some of the 9 health-related recommendations from the Commission’s report including the role of the Council’s partners and the Health and Wellbeing Board

Councillor Motin Uz-Zaman, Deputy Mayor and Cabinet Member for Work, Economic Growth and Faith highlighted work planned and already underway to deliver the employment recommendations. The Council will invest funding to increase employment rates amongst Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic residents and to increase in number of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic staff in senior roles in organisations in Tower Hamlets.

Pam Bhamra, one of the Commissioners, provided her initial thoughts on the proposed action plan. She felt the proposals reflected that the council and its partners would be leading the way on race equality and felt the commitment of funding demonstrated that voices of the Commission and contributors had been heard.

Kevin Bartle, Corporate Director of Resources, highlighted paragraph 6.1 of the covering report which clarified that spending: “will be authorised by the S151 Officer following value for money assessments of the individual non-recurrent project funding requests, which will include consideration of the use of existing resources (including internal staffing resource) within the partnership and the availability of alternative funding sources”. Accordingly, Mr Bartle recommended that the Cabinet agree an additional resolution to delegate authority to allocate funding from the reserve to the Corporate Director Resources, following consultation with the Director Strategy, Improvement and Transformation. The Mayor welcomed this additional recommendation.

The Mayor welcomed the report and noted the pre-decision scrutiny questions and officer responses.  The Mayor then proposed the amended recommendations to Cabinet and they were agreed without dissent. It was:

RESOLVED

1.    To agree the council’s commitments to the anti-racist pledge and note that the actions will be reviewed and updated through on-going appraisal of progress (Appendix 2 to the report).

2.    To agree the actions set out in the Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Inequalities Commission Action Plan and note that the actions will be reviewed and updated through on-going appraisal of progress (Appendix 2 to the report).

3.    To agree to create a £1m reserve to provide the funding needed to deliver the programme set out in the action  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6