Anti-racism Action Plan

Foreword from Paula Kennedy
Background
Promise 1
Promise 2
Promise 3

Foreword from Paula Kennedy

At Melin Homes, our commitment to serving communities across our South-east Wales region is at the heart of everything we do. This includes fostering diverse and inclusive neighborhoods.

Our purpose is clear: to build homes, cultivate vibrant communities, and empower lives. When we speak of community building, we envision spaces where residents flourish, finding a true sense of belonging.

Our journey toward fostering an anti-racist ethos began in 2020 with our adoption of the Deeds Not Words pledge, created by Tai Pawb, Wales’ housing equality charity. This pledge commits us to improving the ethnic diversity of our board and staff, communicating and engaging and developing an inclusive culture.

We have made great strides in our work under Deeds Not Words and now we have produced this our own bespoke anti-racism action plan in line with the Welsh Government’s Anti-racism Wales Action Plan guidelines.

This action plan will see us engage in education, challenging biases, and acknowledging the systemic racism prevalent in contemporary Wales. This plan represents our dedication to making Melin and our communities places of diversity, inclusivity and tolerance.

We have consulted with residents, staff, our board and other stakeholders in forming this action plan and, in turn, the action plan will inform all of our work going forwards.

We have made a strong start, but there is much left to do. Working collaboratively with our people and communities through this action plan will see us make further progress to make Melin communities places for everyone to thrive.

Background

The Welsh Government introduced its Anti-Racist Wales Action Plan in June 2022. Following consultations with Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic communities, its aim is to strengthen Wales as an anti-racist, inclusive nation. It’s approach is to seek to tackle any systemic racism that exists in the policies, procedures and operations of Wales’ housing associations and other public and publicly funded bodies.

The vision of the plan is to have an anti-racist Wales by the year 2030.

Melin operates in five local authorities across south east Wales and within each of these we have a range of diverse neighbourhoods. We serve residents in around 4,000 properties and so it is vital to us that all our communities benefit from the work that we do through our anti-racism action plan.

Melin’s anti-racism action plan consists of three promises. They are:

We will ensure the representation of all our communities at every level of our organisation.
We will ensure that our services are accessible to and work for, all of our communities.
We will engage and communicate clearly with all of our communities and engagement.

Each of these promises has a number of objectives which underpin them, totalling eight in all.

Promise 1

We will ensure the representation of all our communities at every level of our organisation.

Representation is more than just visibility. It means having a diverse range of people from different backgrounds, with a variety of skills and experience making decisions that affect our communities. People who know about the challenges faced by all of our residents and who can scrutinise and make decisions with empathy and insight into how this affects everyone who calls Melin home. We want to provide opportunities for everyone to feel represented and included in the work we do.

Objective	What we are doing
To improve the diversity of board membership, advisory groups, and the wider workforce (including senior leadership positions).	We are committed to having a diverse and representative Board and complying specifically with Regulatory Standard 1 measurable commitments in relation to equality, diversity and inclusion in board diversity. We will continue to monitor and report on the diversity our board. With 100% of our staff data collected, ensure we produce annual reports on recruitment promotion and retention based on race measured against census data and Melin contract holders’ data. Ensure a balance of diversity in staff by addressing recruitment concerns through the diversity in our recruitment project using our QEDL project and building on it the rest of the year. This year, the project will see Melin increase diversity in recruitment along the lines of disability, race and gender across the various stages of recruitment. Targeted actions are being taken and at the end of the year, we will be reporting on percent increase across these protected characteristics at the application, interviewing and selection stages and how it changes the diversity mix of Melin staff. Ensure everyone on our recruitment panel has completed the Unconscious bias in recruitment training either face to face or by eLearning.
Provide anti-racist training to board members and senior leaders as a priority and across wider workforce.	Board members attended antiracism training in 2023. A refresher course on unconscious bias is planned for Board in 2024. Staff would also undergo a hate crime training on detection, prevention and reporting- An antiracism training to be completed all staff. The annual EDI e-learnng should be completed by all staff by the end of April 2024. Cultural sensitivities training to be completed by all front facing teams

Promise 2

We will ensure that our services are accessible to and work for, all of our communities

At Melin, we do so much more than just homes. We provide a range of vital services for residents and communities across our region, and we want to make sure that everyone can access our services, no matter who they are, where they live or what their circumstances are. We want to be able to adapt to changing times and ensure that our services right for our communities, providing each and every one of our residents with value for money.

Objective	What we are doing
Production of a delivery plan to outline how anti-racism and race equality will be embedded throughout service design and delivery.	Following Melin’s antiracism action plan (DNW) and QEDL action plan and putting a project in place to prevent racism within the organisation. Based on our newly reviewed community engagement strategy, we will improve service delivery and engagement of ethnic minority residents. Collecting more EDI data on all Melin contract holders will enable us to have a rich data deposit on ethnic minority contract holders, which turn helps us target problems effecting this group and ensure we can monitor service delivery to them. We will continuously collect EDI data through our customer facing teams and channels by embedding these processes into our daily operational workstreams.
Improve data collection, analysis, usage, and publication across service delivery.	We will analyse all data collected to inform decision making in the organisation and communicating how improved data affected decision making. We will look at how race affects all aspects of our service delivery and using this information to affect change and address the underlying issues. We will monitor ethnic minority groups and how they use our services by collecting race data during for our complaints process and tenant satisfaction survey.
Review policies and processes for reporting racism and discrimination including hate crime and harassment and monitor regularly.	The ASB team report to the Q&E group on the board on hate crime, trends are monitored, and controls are put in place and also monitored. ASB works alongside other govt agencies to address it. Provide clarity and communicate on reporting process for hate crime contract holders.
Ensure information, advice, and advocacy (where applicable) needs of ethnic minority people are fully met.	Usage of race data in advice and advocacy service delivery to monitor ethnic minority contract holder satisfaction and put measures in place to ensure full satisfaction.

Promise 3

We will engage and communicate clearly with all of our communities

Engagement with every one of our residents and communities is business critical to us. We don’t want to lead from the top, we want to collaborate, discuss, problem solve and implement change hand-in-hand with our communities. We want to have ongoing discussions so that we make the journey towards more inclusive communities together with our residents.

Objective	What we are doing
Improve communication and engagement with ethnic minority people and reflect diversity within communication strategies and campaigns.	We will develop a proactive strategy for educating residents where diversity tensions are present. Training our housing officers / housing team on taking a preventative approach with hate incidents and crime. There are clear, accessible, and well communicated reporting mechanisms which are constantly reviewed.
Use new Local Housing Market Assessment (LHMA) process and guidance focused on better understanding housing needs of ethnic minority. Commissioning meets the needs of ethnic minority people.	More work to be carried out on understanding the housing needs of ethnic minority people through consultations with ethnic minority contract holders and organisations working with ethnic diverse people. The community engagement strategy seeks to get ethnic minority contract holders involved on the Melin Voices group, leading to a better understanding of their needs. Reasonable adjustments will be made in short term while looking at long term options on how future building can be adapted to include these differences. We will be exploring different and non-traditional means and channels of engaging. Use data from customer satisfaction survey of ethnic minority contract holders to better understand housing needs and put that into consideration in housing allocation.

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