Podcast Episode: Enable Respect Group: raising awareness of hate crime
Category: Disability
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What follows is a transcription of the audio recording. Due to differences between spoken and written English, the transcript may contain quirks of grammar and syntax.
Enable Scotland – Respect Group
You’re listening to Iriss.fm Scotland’s Social Services podcast.
On this podcast, I went to find out about a project ran by Enable Scotland called the Respect Group. The Respect Group looks at disability hate crime in Scotland. So, I was speaking to Sally and Jason from The Respect Group.
Michael So, Jason, can you tell us what is The Respect Group?
Jason Can I say a wee bit about Enable Glasgow …
Michael Yeah.
Jason … Fortune Works first? So, Enable Glasgow Fortune Works is a service in Drumchapel, Glasgow. It’s one of Scotland’s largest social enterprises and it works with people with disabilities. It offers them the opportunity to come along to the service, train for work and make a valued and useful contribution to the community. It provides a 9 to 4, five-day placement at the centre itself. And it’s a great opportunity to provide a training environment through work related contracts or whether it’s activity based. We’ve got lots of close links to social work and further education and the Health and Social Care Partnership as well. So, we currently have, I think, it’s 118 people. I think we’ve got space for 120, full time placements and it’s adults with learning disabilities. And obviously we work closely with families, statutory sector professionals and agencies as well as social work, itself. So, we get referrals through social work. So, that’s how you effectively get into Fortune Works, itself. The Respect Group is one of the groups that we facilitate within Fortune Works, itself. We’re currently sitting down here at the moment with the Respect Group. What is it we do in The Respect Group then?
Sally The Respect Group, is actually, we actually go out to the schools. And talk to young children in schools to tell them about what a hate crime respect group is. Because if you don’t catch them now when they’re younger, when they get older, they actually, they don’t know what a hate crime is.
Jason So, it’s raising awareness, isn’t it?
Sally Uh huh.
Jason And the younger that you can catch children and youths, teenagers, then you can certainly plant a seed, so to speak, and raise awareness. We have a better understanding as to what a hate crime actually is. It can be from something as small as maybe somebody getting a name calling, then that is a hate crime. So, there’s things that could be done for things that are as small as that or whether it’s the extent of somebody being assaulted and stuff as well.
Sally Actually there is Keep Safe Ambassadors in the centre as well. If we actually saw a hate crime outside, we could actually use our phones and actually report it to the police.
Jason So, that kind of touches quite nicely on some of the stuff that we do within the Respect Group though. So, the Respect Group is primarily getting out and about externally and raising awareness through going out and providing, I suppose, training and awareness to schools, colleges, universities, and any other external organisation that are looking for more information. We would go out and certainly offer that service. But I think touching on that, that’s quite good Sally, because we need to have a better understanding ourself, don’t we?
Sally Uh huh.
Jason As to what a hate crime is. So, we’ve obviously went and had, an organisation called I Am Me Scotland, and we had Keep Safe Ambassador training. And I would probably think about 80 or 90% of the people that attend the service are all hate crime ambassadors, aren’t they?
Sally Uh huh and we actually are hate crime ambassadors, a safe place to come to.
Jason We are indeed, that’s right. Because as part of that, we were telling you about what a safe place is and how people can go and make themselves safe if they are feeling in danger. So, we registered our service as a safe place, didn’t we?
Sally Uh huh.
Jason So, if people were feeling vulnerable or they’re concerned, then they could come into us and we would take note of the hate crime itself and then we can pass it on to the relevant parties. So, we’re an actual third party reporting centre now, aren’t we?
Sally Uh huh.
Michael Ah that’s good. Yeah.
Jason Yeah, we had underwent some training as well. And I think it’s quite good because we meet every week, we meet every Wednesday afternoon, is our time for a slot for the Respect Group. We kind of open it up, don’t we? As to if we’ve seen anything in the news and stuff, don’t we?
Sally Uh huh.
Jason So, if there’s anything, any kind of hot topics or anything like that, we would discuss that within the group. And then have a wee ethical guide as to see whether that kind of sits right with us. And then we would obviously discuss what had actually happened, what the outcome was; if we thought that that was the right outcome. And a lot of, I think you had said, Sally, some of the soaps and that are quite good for national campaigns about hate crimes.
Michael So, why is it important to have a Respect Group?
Jason I think it’s super important because it teaches good values and ethics and morals to people. It’s important that people understand about what their human rights are and about what their entitlement is with their human rights. I think that’s key to pretty much everything. Everybody’s got their own human rights. So, I think it’s essential that we all know where we stand with them and what’s expected and obviously what we don’t need to put up with. So, I think human rights are important and the fundamental core of any kind of work that we do.
Michael Jason you mentioned about Fortune Works and all that and the brilliant work that you do here at Fortune Works, so can anybody join the Respect Group or do you have to be involved in Fortune Works before?
Jason Yeah, I think primarily if it was like, certainly the guys that attend Fortune Works. So, there’s 118 people that attend Fortune Works, so they can request to participate in the Respect Group whilst they’re here and they attend the service. We would probably limit it to kind of 7 people in attendance because it’s a good wee number for a presentation. But it’s also quite good for travelling and stuff when we’re out on our journey; it makes kind of easier travelling and stuff. If we’re in the van then we can get like 9 people so it would be like 7 people taking part and then obviously 2 staff. As much as we kind of cut it off further than that then there’s certainly scope for opening it up, there’s certainly scope for partnership working, going forward.
Michael You mentioned you go out to universities and colleges to deliver hate crime training. Can you tell us about what’s involved in that?
Jason A lot of it is kind of word of mouth. So, people will hear about us and then they’ll contact us and ask us. Certainly for the university one that we went to see, that’s an existing partnership that we have, it’s called Drumming Up Change. So, we work with 5th year pupils in Drumchapel High School, we work with them. Joint work with them, raise awareness about that difficult age range with teenagers that are in like 5th year. So, it’s then that joint working with people with disabilities and that kind of teenage years when maybe these guys have got things on in their life. Whether it’s maybe gangs or, catching guys at that kind of age. So, what we’re doing is, it’s a research project with Glasgow University and Strathclyde University. And we’re meeting up kind of every couple of months with the premise that we would host four events each year. And the guys within 5th year, Drumchapel High School and our Drumming Up Change group of which some of the Respect Group are involved, would be working towards setting up four joint events each year. And really kind of setting up the whole thing, coming up with the ideas as to what events to host. We recently had a baking event where we baked. We went up to Drumchapel High School, we went into their kitchens, we worked in partnership with they guys to make cupcakes and sponges and scones and biscuits and stuff. And then in the afternoon we had a football competition. It’s a really kind of great project and as I say, they’re doing some research with that. So that they hope to then inspire other organisations to take on much like the same kind of joint working, joined up collaborative approach that we’re working on. So, they can roll it out to other organisations to follow suit with a good pathway that we know that’s worked. There was another one that we done in Knightswood High School and there’s kind of plans to kind of roll it out across the board. What we’re working on the now is just, obviously it’s a stand alone Respect presentation that we have so we wanted to widen it a wee bit, didn’t we?
Sally Uh huh.
Jason Open it up to further organisations and I suppose, giving us a wee bit more time as well as we’re currently in the development of a three-day workshop. The first kind of part of things would be the Respect presentation, wasn’t it?
Sally Uh huh.
Jason We would deliver the presentation as we would currently do. We’ve got varying presentations; we can do presentations to a university …
Sally Uh huh.
Jason … or we can do also one to a school that’s a wee bit more easier to take in. But as I say, the workshop’s huge because it allows us opportunity to do the presentation in the first week. We could go back the second week and then we could do a workshop about what is a disability. And then on the third part, on the back of our I Am Me Scotland training, we offer that as the third part of the presentation and then we can field that probably with some questions and stuff, can’t we?
Sally Uh huh.
Michael So, if people listening to this and they want you guys to come out to do a workshop, how can they get in touch with you?
Jason They can phone the centre at Fortune Works. So, we’re on 0141 9444 383; ask for Jason. Or they can email myself; jason.methven:enableglasgow.org.uk. So, there’s a couple of ways that you can go about getting ahold of us.
Michael My last question would be, what has the feedback been like when you go out to deliver the workshops, have they been positive?
Sally It was actually very good. Some of them very actually enjoyed it. When you actually went to the one the other day, when you actually get all the like all the students. The students would actually come up and ask you questions. And actually get to know, you know, I’ll go up and then said, oh how did you learn how to do that? How do you do this? How do you stand up and talk? How do this? And you get all different questions coming on. It’s actually getting them to know us. It’s actually good.
Jason Exactly that. It’s about inclusivity.
Sally Uh huh.
Jason And ensuring that everybody’s included. So, it’s great for breaking down they barriers. Sally, well put.
Sally Uh huh.
Jason Absolutely. It’s great, brilliant for that. And I think that’s probably why, obviously, why we’re here and why we’re doing it. It’s great for breaking they barriers, setting up links. It was the driving force, I suppose, as well for setting up the workshop because the feedback was so good that we wanted to expand on it and then provide further opportunities as well because the feedback was so good. So, aye, we’ve had loads of great feedback.
Michael Okay. Thanks.
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