Racist Incident Management Scheme
Gateshead Council recognises that it has a duty to maintain a workplace and services where everyone, regardless of race, colour, nationality (including citizenship) or ethnic or national origins is treated with dignity and respect. All employees and service users will be made aware of their own rights and responsibilities and all racist incidents will be dealt with firmly and confidentially with full support for victims.
A number of important policies and procedures have been developed to help combat and deal with discrimination, and promote equal opportunities.
This "Racist Incident Policy" is an important part of this process and supports the Council’s Equal Opportunities Policy. It does this by clearly outlining the procedure for dealing with racial harassment or racist incidents against service users. It also explains what employees can do if they are subjected to racial harassment or racist incidents.
Following this introduction Section 2 broadly defines and describes a racist incident. Section 3 provides guidance on the initial steps on reporting racist incidents and is supported by Appendix 2.
Appendix 2 provides detailed guidance on the role officers, elected members and service users have in this process.
Section 4 outlines how this Racist Incident Policy will be implemented and reaffirms the clear message that the Council will not tolerate racist incidents and regards racism as totally unacceptable.
Finally the Racist Incident Policy has been developed on a multi-agency basis in consultation with a range of Partners, which are listed in Appendix 8. The Council acknowledges the involvement and support offered by the various Partners in developing the Racist Incident Strategy. The agencies involved will be instrumental in ensuring the Policy's effectiveness.