Newcastle City Council is committed to equality and diversity and we are currently reviewing and refreshing our equality priorities for the city. Here's a bit more about this:
We have looked at a wide range of evidence and this tells us that we need to focus on the following areas:
What we think our priorities should be
We think our equality priorities should be as follows:
Work with communities to tackle hate crime and encourage reporting
Hate incidents and hate crime are acts of violence or hostility directed at people because of who they are or who someone thinks they are. For example, you may have been verbally abused by someone in the street because you’re disabled, or someone thought you were gay. We want to tackle these and encourage people to report incidents.
Support vulnerable groups to access employment opportunities
Being in good quality employment isn’t just good for you financially; it represents security, dignity, self-respect and hope for the future. We want Newcastle to be a city where everyone, regardless of background or circumstances, has a choice of good quality, fairly paid job opportunities.
Improve education outcomes for vulnerable children
We are aiming to tackle long-term educational challenges of attendance, improving attainment in our secondary schools and enabling more young people to access higher education.
Improve the health and wellbeing of our communities
We want to make sure that people are able to live heathy, fulfilling lives, and to have the right health and care support when they need it. Newcastle’s population has a growing proportion of older people, more people who have complex needs and greater numbers of people with recognised learning and physical disabilities.
In addition to this we are exploring inequalities relating to the Council’s workforce.
The key issues which have emerged from the workforce planning data and staff survey include:
Looking at how the workforce mirrors the make-up of the community
Every person who works for the council makes an important contribution to delivering our vision. Our staff continue to provide high quality services and make a real difference to Newcastle. We want to strive for a workforce which represents our local communities.
Making sure staff feel engaged
We are committed to having an engaged workforce; ensuring that all employees have a voice and can get involved and shape the future of our services and how we deliver them.
Please give us your views by taking part in our survey (below). If you have any questions about this or you need this information in a different format, such as large print, please contact Louise Crosby at: louise.crosby@newcastle.gov.uk.
