From Benign Neglect to Citizen Khan. 30 Years of Equalities Practice in Birmingham was published by brap in June 2015.
A number of cities – from Plymouth to Sheffield to York – have held fairness commissions in recent years to understand why entrenched inequalities persist. As useful and, in some cases, penetrating as these commissions have been they have tended to ignore the nuts and bolts of how public agencies ‘do’ equality – how they go about tackling discrimination, eradicating social patterns of disadvantage, and fulfilling their legislative equalities duties. This is a serious gap. Understanding why these approaches have failed may go some way to explain why serious inequalities continue.
This report tries to fill that gap by:
- exploring how one city – Birmingham – has approached equalities issues over the last 30 years
- trying to sketch the impact of these approaches
- suggesting how we can do things differently in the future
In an accompanying blog on the Barrow Cadbury Trust website, Joy Warmington, CEO of brap, writes about 30 years of equalities practice in Birmingham and the need for clarity, a shared vision and getting on the front foot.