Reporting back on progress

Communities theme

In our communities theme, we are working to ensure that:

Developing a set of tools and approaches to improve our reach with Black, Asian, and minority ethnic communities by working with partners and participants in the Southwark Stands Together listening activity

A project group of five members has been established in addition to Community Southwark to oversee the development of the approaches. This includes people from our faith, Black, Traveller and Latin American communities.

An engagement plan involving three open sessions one with people who live in the borough, one with staff and one where we come together. We are planning the delivery and the engagement in collaboration with community representatives. This means that the toolkit will be helpful to staff and support different communities to get involved in making decisions about their services and neighbourhoods.

We are working with a small group of community representatives to develop the toolkit and review feedback from both our workforce and communities.

Reviewing our grantmaking and commissioning practices to remove any barriers to equal access to funding and delivery opportunities. We will consider how targeted support can be offered to groups who have not previously accessed grant funding, and whether the way in which we organise our grantmaking enables or disables people to access these opportunities

We have agreed on the different themes the review will look at and asked the review to recommend a definition of Black, Asian and minority ethnic organisation. Equinox a Black-led organisation has been appointed to carry out the review.

We have contacted people who were involved in Southwark Stands together and local groups to take part using our own, Business and Community Southwark networks so we can hear from a range of organisations so our recommendations address the experiences of everyone who might face barriers to accessing our grant schemes.

A project board has been appointed to oversee the work that has members from three community groups and the council so that our communities can have confidence in the report’s recommendations and the independence of the review.

We are currently in the first stage of reviewing our grants process, working with voluntary and community organisations in the borough.

Page last updated: 31 August 2022