Cool Yule

Tomorrow is the shortest day of the year, celebrated as Yule in the old Celtic calendar.

This solstice was well known a long time before people developed instruments to measure this sort of thing. People were aware of it because they were aware of the changes in the seasons and the wider world around them. From tomorrow the days start getting lighter and the nights start getting shorter.

When the 'pagan' celebrations were taken over and lost by things like christmas, we lost.

I hope you can enjoy some sort of celebration tomorrow - have a cool yule!

I'll also wish you a happy new year, and all the best for 2007.

(Although actually the Celts celebrated new year at the Spring Equinox, 21st March, when the daylight becomes longer than the night. This is also the New Year in Iran, Afghanistan, and the Kurdish lands amongst other places, known as Newroz.)

NAN conference 2006 - Brighton

My main impression from the conference this year was that in some way the advocacy community has matured. At the same time there were lots of young and enthusiatic new advocates, often people who had simply seen the jobs advertised and gone for them, but nevertheless they were saying that they were now in the most inspiring and satisfying jobs they'd ever had...

The downside is that some people were still saying they couldn't explain their work to friends or family (or even some (local) government officials) and there is still an issue about what we do, but I don't think that is too big a problem. I like a certain amount of je ne sais quois in what we do, it increases richness and diversity as much as it may cause problems...

On this note, Rick Henderson did ask, somewhat rhetorically, if we should change the definition of advocacy. I almost got up and shouted YES. The definition that dominates all the A4A literature is the hopelessly ungainly and clearly committee devised*

"Advocacy is taking action to help people say what they want, secure their rights, represent their interests and obtain services they need. Advocates and advocacy schemes work in partnership with the people they support and take their side. Advocacy promotes social inclusion, equality and social justice."

My own definition is more like "Advocacy is about ensuring that people can make their voices heard." Although I've just noticed that the definition I published on the Advocacy Action website is a bit different... At least this is simple enough to be understood by the service users who are often being ignored, even if it doesn't meet everyone else's needs.

At the end of the day I was glad Rick's question was rhetorical, and I don't think the definition of advocacy needs to be changed in the way some people seemed to be suggesting. We need to embrace and champion our use of this word, for we do do something unique and special with it, and our organisations and our advocates have matured and become even more powerful and impressive, and our new recruits are being enthusiastic and empowered, and we were all inspired by yet another successful gathering of 170 advocates all being happy about what they do.

I'm already looking forward to next year...

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* The approach developed in Rick and Mike Pochin's book was much better, and it was a shame A4A couldn't do something along those lines.

Refugee week events

The first event in Wakefield for this year's Refugee Week has just finished, and I ate and danced and helped clear up and still I'm home at a reasonable hour to blog, which is an added bonus.

It was the Iranian Cultural Celebration tonight, and there were a couple of live performances as well as DJs and lots of delicious food. First up on violin was a former member of the Iranian Philharmonic Orchestra (from the time of the Shah). There was a bit of a band going on here, but I sadly missed most of it as I ended up working the door. Later a different man with the same name played a saz I think (see pictures here) which is very similar to an instrument an old Turkish friend of mine used to play which he called a 'ballamer' (phonetically, approximately). In and around these performances the DJs kept the party dancing.

Later in the week we have a 'refugee day' event hosted by the local MP on Friday (invitation only) and an African Night in Wakefield Cathedral on Friday evening (free, just turn up). Then on Saturday, 6-10pm, there is a Kurdish Cultural Celebration in Lightwaves Leisure Centre again (ticket required, call RASA on 01924 368855).

Someone said to me that these events weren't very cohesive or didn't seem to promote integration: Iranian, African and Kurdish events on different nights...

I think there are two responses to this. First I can't help but remember the joint Eid/Xmas party I organised in 2003. This tried hard to combine all the cultures in Wakefield, and we had Iranian and Kurdish DJs, people came from many different countries including quite a few from Albania/Kosovo, and from different parts of Africa. As the finale we had a proper 5 piece African salsa band (afficionados may know that salsa originated in Africa - like 'all' music - and was transported to South America on the slave ships...). Anyway this band started playing, and 5 minutes later 146 people had left the room - and there were only 150 to start with. Even the African people, faced with this mass exodus, got up and walked out too.

Now I've personally always taken the approach that if some people are willing to go to the effort to perform for me, then I'll at least give them the courtesy of listening and then applauding their efforts (if not necessarily their musicianship or their taste). I learnt that night not to expect such polite conventions from refugee audiences.

There is in fact a whole article, to be carefully written, about racism and discrimination and refugees. Of course I know that there have been bitter conflicts in many parts of the world where refugees come from, and the memories of these conflicts and the deep seated prejudices that come with them are difficult to forget. They have also not had the advantages of the strenuous and focused anti-discrimination campaigns we have learnt from in the West over the last century (starting from women's suffrage, and moving through the American civil rights movement, etc). And finally, refugees tend not to discriminate against English people in my experience, but people with darker skin than them for example are more likely to lose out (along with their traditional enemies) in a movement that we can see being replicated around the world again and again.

I don't want to make any sweeping generalisations here, but I always half expected refugees who had fought for freedom and justice for people in their own societies to still be standing up for freedom and justice in their new lives in the UK, and I've usually been disappointed (although I love working with them anyway, and they're no more intolerant than many English people, just in different ways).

So all sorts of clarifying statements are rushing into my head, and I know what I've just written could be contentious, but with all that in mind I'd like to move swiftly on to the second response to the lack of cohesion/integration suggestion.

These people are living in the UK every day. Sure there are positive steps we can make towards integration, and we're taking them on many of these days: finding work, getting on ok at school, bringing our children up well, etc. All this needs integration. This is happening every day.

So why can't we, one or two days a year, have a day to celebrate native cultures? In fact I think it's imperative to do this: refugees need to do it for their mental health, to help them maintain their sense of identity and history, and to help their children understand their origins; and the rest of the population need occasional days like this to add a bit of colour and spice to their lives and relieve the exhausting boredom.

And who are we to say that these different cultural traditions should be celebrated within the confines of a single event, or that refugee week events should be concentrated on being more cohesive and on delivering the Government's integration agenda? In fact there were quite a few English people there tonight, quite a few Kurdish people, a chinese woman, and an African man (with a work permit of all things :-) ). There was integration here as well as cultural stimulation and mental tonics.

I'm looking forward to the next event - but you have to have an invitation to attend, so how integrational will that be...?

Friends in high places...

...that's the side of a hill in Glasgow anyway (or the local department store).

Anyway Cartside is an interesting blog from a woman who works with refugees and languages and victims of human rights abuses. I particularly liked her descrption of the problems of getting funding, and I hope she finds a good resolution.

She linked to this blog a couple of weeks back in a post about refugee blogs, and I hope if she sees this that she'll find my thoughts on interpreters interesting.

Something to read for anyone who thinks the notes on resolving the police issues are too long...

Interpreters

I've been working with interpreters on and off for six years now. These days what particularly interests me is the links between interpreting and advocacy - particularly as I try to support RASA Advocacy Project in its work with refugees. After all if advocacy is about getting your voice heard, then if English isn't your first language and you don't know the culture or systems you're working with, making your voice heard is an even more challenging task, and more needful and demanding of advocacy support.

There are lots of things to say about interpreting which I can't cover now, but my conclusion has been to use interpreters directly in my work as little as possible. I remember going to meet someone who was about to be evicted on the request of their Social Worker, because he ‘couldn't speak any English at all, and there was something else wrong with him - maybe learning difficulties’ (to paraphrase). I went without an interpreter, and even on that occasion I was able to communicate quite effectively with him. Less than a week later I was having conversations about world politics, migration, economics and art with him. A few weeks later, over a 4 hour conversation (admittedly a long time, but advocates need a long time), I got down the details of his asylum application more thoroughly than any of his previous Home Office interviewers or legal representatives.

This was a particularly vivid example, but it has often been replicated on a smaller scale. I think the key is trust, along with really listening - which requires engaging with the person I'm talking to. The trouble with using an interpreter is that many of the signals each of you is trying to send out can be lost in the translation. All the nuances of language which caring professionals learn to use to put people at ease are reduced to the simple mechanics of interpetation.

If we could train the people we need to communicate with to use interpreters effectively we could manage with this process: they would be interested enough, determined enough, and have the skills to ask all the questions they need to properly understand what we're saying. Unfortunately that isn't the case, and often this is compounded by various issues of the interpreter themselves (e.g. been in England for 20 years and can't actually remember their own language all that well, or from an antagonistic political group, or still bound up with the homophobia prevalent in their native culture, etc.).

Sometimes of course we need to tackle these issues and just make the interpreting process work, and in many jobs it's impractical to use any other method. I recently met a detained asylum seeker, but despite knowing his official broad ethnic origin I found it difficult to determine his actual language, and I was worried that his interpretation and other support needs weren't being met. He did have a 'qualified' and 'registered' interpreter working with him, an interpreter I know already from previous work, and I could have used him. Instead I found a volunteer from RASA.

The gamble paid off very nicely, as it turned out that the two men were almost neighbours in their home country and could communicate very well (unlike the interpreter it turns out, who is from another region and speaks a different dialect). My criteria for choosing this volunteer were quite different though. I wanted an 'ordinary' person with a modest, kind, open, quiet, relaxed and friendly manner; someone who knew the difficulties of the English welfare state, but didn't assume knowledge; someone who spoke enough English to communicate with me, not necessarily to pass exams; someone with experience of advocacy. My volunteer has never acted as an advocate, but I have been his advocate in the past so he knows what he needed to. I've also known him for two years now and he has kindly done other things for me in the past.

The meeting went well. Apparently this was the first time the asylum seeker had spent such a long time engaging with anyone. I got a good picture of his character. He did these little theatrical answers occasionally if I asked a question he didn't like. Much of the meeting went by without being interpreted for me, which was fine for the first session. I didn't get any advocacy goals, and I don't know whether the two will meet again, but I hope after a little reflection I will be asked to arrange another meeting, and anyway I know I can communicate more now that there is some trust and understanding developed.

I had an interesting conversation with the staff afterwards too. They said they could only use properly 'qualified' and 'registered' interpreters, and they couldn't involve my volunteer.

An interesting analogy came to me in that conversation, to do with research methodology. I've recently seen some very badly designed questionnaires going around, in fact questionnaires that seem primarily designed to be able to be analysed (you know the kind - each question has four alternative answers, or you give a number from 1 to 5, bad to good). It seemed to me that the sort of conversations interpreters get involved in are quite similar to these questionnaires: you get an answer, but it's just a summary, the best answer of an unsatisfactory selection.

There is another approach to doing research though, based on interviewing. This approach is much more broad, and the interviews can go in many different directions. It's useful of course to start with an idea of the information you want to get, but at the same time much more relevant learning can be gained in the spaces that are developed between the questions you plan to ask. Of course properly interpreting and evaluating the value of information you get from this process requires even more time and effort, but it seems to me this effort is worth it. My interpreter/volunteer was helping me to go through this process - and it seems completely possible to me for the police or psychiatrists or prison staff to take a similar approach, rather than persevere with registered but sometimes inappropriate professional interpreters.

And that goes for all the rest of us too.

Cantonese/Mandarin reading matter sought

Donations of reading matter only please, for a lonely Chinese woman with limited mobility.

Please email me for delivery/collection arrangements: blogger@visctrix.net

Thanks

RASA Advocacy Project

It was RASA's annual general meeting (AGM) on Friday, and there was a really good turnout. I didn't count but it seemed like more than 50 people to me, from a variety of places around the world. An Iranian breeze blew in a violinist to entertain us, and Ramtin did his usual wonders on guitar. There was also some delicious food.

Amongst a few surprises I ended up taking the minutes (again), receiving a special recognition award on behalf of Chris who has been a dedicated volunteer and considerable asset to the organisation for the last seven months, and being nominated onto the Committee by Nesar (and duly elected).

Over the last couple of years I haven't been as closely involved with RASA as I was in it's first year or so, although I have kept in close touch, and we have continued to support each other in different ways. I feel really happy about recementing this link and developing a new relationship as a committee member. As with any community organisation there are a variety of challenges ahead, but I feel like we can work together to continue our growth towards a vibrant and effective project.

Racism and discrimination

These weren't subjects that I initially planned to write about here, but the way things have happened I need to say more.

Racism is a serious issue, but it needs to be seen in the context of wider discriminatory practices. One example of discrimination among many is the dalits of India (also known as the untouchables). A quarter of India's population is dalit, but they are systematically abused by many people (including the police, the judiciary, landlords and businesspeople) according to this Human Rights Watch report (see especially chapter VIII: The Criminalisation of Social Activism).

This is not racism, although it is very close structurally to racism. This is the legacy of more than 3000 years of religious and intra-racial segregation, discrimination and abuse. So much so that many Indian people (those in the caste system as well as some dalits) cannot even see the discrimination. And those who dare to speak out are likely to suffer.

It is very often the case that people who suffer discrimination of whatever sort also end up having difficulty communicating their problems. I'm not just talking about the dalits here, but about people in the UK with learning disabilities or mental health problems, working class people, people with few formal educational achievements, poor people, children, old people, people from minority religious groups, ill or disabled people, people who are not heterosexual, or people from minority ethnic communities. For a whole range of reasons these groups of people are more likely to suffer from discrimination, and are less likely to have their problems listened to or seriously addressed.

I am fortunate in many ways. I don't belong to any of these groups. I have a strong voice. I have been able to help some people to speak out and get results.

Ironically when I was working for Social Services & Health, a role where it is important to be particularly aware and careful of potential political implications of everything you do, I got the message that seior management did want advocates to challenge their staff and services. They recognised that there were inevitably people who were not receiving the services they were entitled to, and that these people often didn't have the resources to make effective challenges on their own.

Now that I am helping the Wakefield Children and Young People's Strategic Partnership to develop a Code of Practice for Children's Complaints, there are clear messages being developed about the importance of complaining for children and organisations alike.

Racism is a small element of this wider picture, and I take it as seriously as I do everything else. It is as wrong for a police officer to stop and search a car driver for the colour of their skin as it is for a doctor to not spend extra time making sure they can hear what a woman with a speech impediment is trying to say to them.

The police are doing well in some ways. Following the Lawrence inquiry they have a good definition of racism:

Recommendation 12 of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry Report states that the definition of a racist incident should be:

"any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or by any other person"

Source: Crime Reduction Toolkits

This is good because it depends on the perceptions or feelings of people, rather than objective and independent evidence which is often difficult to obtain. It has problems becasue it's hard to understand in some ways, especially if you're immersed in the legal system. It is also problematic because we can accept that an incident is racist, but feel that every other point about it makes it impossible to act on (someone wrote 'packey' [sic] on your car, but there are no witnesses and no leads). There is also a good report from Civitas (pdf) that questions the value of the Macpherson definition of 'institutional racism'.

In my quiet advocate's way, I want to work with the police on facing these real issues. They come from the stories of actual people, and they cannot be resolved through traditional policing methods which rely on objective evidence that can be judged in court.

'Quiet?' I hear some of my readers asking... I think I have been writing in a quiet way. Maybe not the headlines: I wanted people to read, but perhaps in retrospect the headlines prevented them from paying proper attention to what they were reading. But the stories themselves are quiet: a young man is quietly taken into custody, records quietly fail to appear, he quietly declines to complain, Shaun and I quietly try to speak in court and are quietly ushered out, Ronelle quietly says 'I used to think the Police were here to help us, but now... now I don't know... I don't think they're very helpful really'.

For years I've been hearing complaints about the police, and usually I'm left trying to help people address problems they can do something about, maintaining the quiet.

These stories remain a quiet protest, a quiet call to action, because I am not shouting about the deaths in police custody, I'm not shouting about the weapons the UK police have issued that international law bans armies from using (CS Gas is a chemical weapon banned under the Geneva Convention), I'm not shouting about the discriminatory record of local police forces around the UK (this report has already been quoted, there's the MacPherson report, Racism still blights police despite post-Lawrence improvements, Police 'frozen solid' in addressing racism, report finds, and many others).

The stories I hear are usually too quiet to get anywhere, but I write them here because I think these quiet and relatively uncontroversial stories are the place to start to make positive changes.

I'm not shouting, and when the original story that started all this (for this blog at least) is republished with the relevant follow up, when the current fuss has died down, I am still hopeful that most people will be thankful that the issues are being raised in this simple way.

A family's freedom - £45!

It never rains, but it pours. I will write about my experiences in the Magistrates Court earlier today, but you'll have to wait a bit.

This morning two officers knocked on my friend Ronelle's door. They said there was a court order, and if she didn't pay £45 straight away they would have to take her into custody. Then they asked if there was anyone who could look after Ronelle's five month old daughter Shara. At the moment, on the spot, Ronelle couldn't think of anyone. She had no money at all. I know she has been short of food recently. Her husband is desparately trying to find some money that's promised to him in London.

My phone was off (I was in a hospital), so Ronelle rang my friend Alison. Ronelle and Alison have met because Alison is a bountiful distributor of things in the community (amongst other talents). She is an insatiable collector, knows many people who give things to her, and passes them on to good homes without a second thought. I've know Samuel and Ronelle for almost four years now, but in the last year things have been very difficult and they needed to know someone like Alison. Unfortunately Alison is also disabled and poor herself.

But faced with the prospect of a mother being sent to prison and her baby being taken into care if you can't find £45 to help, what option do you have? Just before I went to Court I got a message from Alison. She couldn't afford to have this money out of her account for more than 24hrs. After court I had no option but to reimburse Alison. I've just got back from trying to console and reassure Ronelle. Fortunately Shara is keeping her in cheerful company.

£45? The system is prepared to lock a woman up and take her baby into care for non-payment of a £45 fine? How much will this cost? It costs £3125 per month to keep someone in prison (source: Rethinking Crime and Punishment, a strategic initiative of the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation). Recent research suggests it costs £633 per week to provide foster care in England, with a funding shortfall of £615.7million across England in 2005/6 (source: British Association for Adopting and Fostering, BAAF). This doesn't include the ongoing damage to family life. It doesn't include the fact that Ronelle would then have a criminal record and would probably find it more difficult to get work, even doing the minimum wage care work she aspires to. And it doesn't include the costs of the Court proceedings and Police time.

What's all this for? A couple of years ago the teenage Ronelle, fresh from Namibia, agreed to have a car registered in her name. The car was sold, but there was some problem with the registration documents. There was a parking fine. The new owner ignored it and Court letters were sent to Ronelle's old address so she never received them. They caught up with her finally when she was 8 1/2 months pregnant, very ill, and unable to attend Court. I sent a message to Court, but so much was happening at the time it all got swamped and forgotten about.

So here we have it: after a minor admin error a couple of years ago I have paid £45 to save a family.

What more can I say? What a ridiculous situation.

Racist police actions

Update, Monday 15 January 2007

This is a very old post but people are still finding it through Google searches and it needs an update. A group of people working with the council supported a Kurdish youth group. Something happened to one of the young people and issues were raised on this blog. A lot of positive work was done as a result - threats of legal action by the police have a tendency to motivate a blogger! By June the issues with the police were resolved (do look at this post).

The situations described are now well in the past. Readers of this blog are advised to click on the title (Advocacy Blog) and concentrate on more recent posts.

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Update, Thursday 20 April, 11:50 PM

This post has been temporarily removed while the Advocacy Action Committee considers threats of potential legal action by West Yorkshire Police.

Please see the Disclaimer for further information about the relationship between this blog and Advocacy Action.

There have been some positive discussions today about how to move forward on the issues that have been raised, and it has always been my intention to move forward positively. I would like to stress that I have never suggested that any individual officers are racist - the post refers to racist actions. (Just as I believe in my work with vulnerable people we cannot call any individual 'stupid', but we all do stupid things occasionally.)

There was one particular officer who was identified personally in a comment I attached to the original post. I have heard today that this officer was upset about being identified in this way and felt that they were thereby associated with the alleged racist actions. I am sorry for any upset caused by this misunderstanding, and can clearly say that after several years of working with this officer the thought would never cross my mind that they were themselves racist.

There will be further updates after due deliberation on the issues.