Agenda and draft minutes

Apologies were received from Cllr Anna King.

The minutes were agreed as a true record.

There was no one present for this item.  Morcea reported that she believed that the IAG was being set up again for Northampton.  Neelam stated that she was pleased it was being revitalised.

Mavis reported there had been a lot of progress with admin support offered by Voice and NDAS who would be co-ordinating the work and Christine from Eve who would be producing a list of all the services available for DA victims with a brief description of the services they offered.   Meetings would be the second Tuesday of every other month then fed back at the Forum meeting.

Neelam was very pleased admin support had been found but expressed concern that there wasn’t a deadline for the information to be sent to Christine and was concerned that it was taking so long.  Anjona responded with thanks to Christine for taking this on and that she was having difficulties in getting responses from people and it hadn’t been a very long timescale for this type of undertaking.  Anjona also thanked Mavis for pushing this through.  However, she reminded everyone that the majority of investment was in statutory services.  She also thanked Neelam for holding the group to account.

Recruitment for the BAME worker had been unsuccessful and concern was raised around the advert, the positions scope and language used – that if we didn’t understand how could potential applicants.  Suggestion was made that the BAME group had a conversation with Voice around the wording.  Mavis and Rachel agreed to do this.  Rachel added that she was hearing from Women’s Aid CEOs across the country that recruitment was particularly difficult at the present moment.  Dawn agreed as she was currently in the process of recruiting 3 more workers and added that hopefully when furlough ended there would be more people on the job market.

Rachel asked that if anyone wanted to refer a victim not to email individual officers but to call or email the helpline.  Ruby had now left NDAS to go on and study but had been replaced by Divyah who had felt very welcomed at the first sub-group meeting.

Koulla said organisations need to think outside the box – there were lots of unemployed people,  are they seeing the jobs?  And if we do not understand the terminology they are not likely to and will not apply.

16 Days of activism – the sub group would like to have representation on the campaign.

Superintendent Sarah Johnson, Northamptonshire Police

Supt Ind Sarah Johnson joined the meeting to answer questions around Northants Police response to women’s safety in light of the recent murders in other parts of the country.

Sarah referenced the work going on nationally by HMIC which was publicly accessible but wanted to concentrate on the predator which is  going on regionally and locally.  No longer were they thinking of modifying women’s behaviour and the way they dressed but addressing the predatory and inappropriate behaviour of some males.  Operation Kayak has paid officers (as opposed to drawing officers from other services) doing this work mainly in the Night Time Economy also tackling inappropriate and predatory behaviour and misogyny hate crime in the community with proactive and community teams.  Northamptonshire was making a huge commitment and was well ahead of other regional forces.  They were also working on how better to apply equality.

Dawn said she was aware of the focus on the Racecourse but asked whether any work was being done around other popular areas such as Beckets Park,  Abington Park and other Night Time Economy areas.  Sarah responded that a lot of analyses was being done and there had been some reported incidents of drinks being spiked recently and reassured everyone that the focus of Kayak was not just the town centre.  However she would need to find out the specific plans for the parks mentioned.

Neelam raised the concern of young people around the recent murders.  Sarah responded that they were still discussing the ramifications and there needed to be a balanced response.  It was a priority at strategic level and needed to be backed up with the significant activity and focus that was being undertaken on predatory behaviour and other risk areas.  There were some key outcomes coming out of that work.

Anjona thanked  Sarah for accepting the invite to NRECs event on misogyny but wanted to highlight the police response to the Sarah Everard vigil.  Where other forces around the country were allowing vigils to take place, it was not allowed in Northampton making women, black women in particular, unsupported ?? as they do not see the excellent work that is going on but just feel that their voice was not being heard.  Sarah responded that it was a difficult decision to take as she echoed those feelings but Covid had made things complicated.  There was a lot of disparity across the country in how the Covid regulations were imposed.  However, she would be very happy to work with women’s groups now if they wanted to arrange anything and many officers were in support.

Morcea queried the relationship with Street Pastors as they did a lot of good work as volunteers and wondered how they meshed with the police.  Sarah responded that historically the relationship had been very strong and now the night time economy was opening up there was a huge push to re-engage with volunteers and she would find out the current situation.

Meeting on Friday 9am.  Dawn sent a request for Kettering and Corby to be involved – Debs confirmed that they had been invited. Debs sent the invitation to Mavis.

First planning meeting arranged for the following Friday, 1 October.  Anyone not already received an invite please email forums.nbc@westnorthants.gov.uk.

Pauline expressed interest, as a co-Chair of this Forum in attending a meeting of the police Women’s Forum.  Sarah welcomed that and  stated they were currently going through a review at the moment to see how they captured gender with issues such as uniform due to it being a male dominant service.  Her passion was for specialist operations such as firearms and the underrepresentation of women. Action: Debbie to put Pauline & Sarah in touch.  Sarah also said that they often had speakers at their meetings and she would be in touch with members in the future.

Neelam – 9 days festival coming up 14. Send the flyer.  Diwali 30/10 please join us, 10am – 8pm with parade at 6pm with food stalls.

Morcea – October was Black History month – more details can be found here

Black History Month | West Northamptonshire Council (westnorthants.gov.uk)

Cllr Jolley – weekly coffee mornings at St Albans and food bank on Fridays.  Abington library had monthly coffee mornings.

Alex – During October they would be hosting an event around black history month celebrating projects they have funded across the county.  Including an event around hate crime and PCSE with a webinar on 14^th October to help people learn and understand what to do around hate crime and how to report it.  General funding opportunities continue – visit Northamptonshire Community Foundation (ncf.uk.com)  or contact Alex for more information on funding or events -  alex@ncf.uk.com

Dawn – NRC were looking to recruit 3 more officers and asked the group to please help raise awareness amongst their contacts.

Mavis – currently organising black history month and had invited some organisations to contribute with information around the help and support they provided during Covid.  They also had funding from NCF for a cooking programme and an event where people could come and sample different food with music and dance included to make it a fun event – no date had been arranged yet and will circulate a flyer when ready.

Neelam – Princess Royal had attended an event on 14 September.  She had been very inspiring and talked to almost everyone.

Pauline had attended the World Peace Day to celebrate Bangladesh Independence and stated it was the best organised event she had been do.  The flag of India was flown outside the Guildhall for the first time.

Eleri – launch of police interfaith event – look forward to seeing people

Hate Crime awareness week – WNC Officers and partners would be  on the Market Squares in Daventry on 12 October and Northampton on 14 October from 11am – 1pm.

NFRS - Katy informed the group that, following on from Lauren’s presentation on recruitment at the last meeting, they were organising a community engagement and ‘have-a-go’ day to try and knock down the barriers that it was a man’s job and give the opportunity to speak to the crews.  Details to be circulated to the Forum once finalised.  Kay stated she had been a firefighter for 1 ½  ...  view the full minutes text for item 22.

16 Days of Activism

International Women’s Day 2022

It was agreed to keep meets on Tuesdays at 11am for 2022.

11am, Tuesday 23 November 2021

11am Tuesday 23 November 2022 by Teams