Minutes: August 2005

Wednesday 10th August 2005

1. Present

Robin, Christine, Doug, Nick, Dave, Gary, Helen, Ken, Chris, Gillian - SBC, Kathleen – SBC.

1.Apologies:

Cllr Dart

2. Minutes of meeting held on 8 June 2005 and matters arising

5.1 second paragraph – Gary raised an issue of clarity about the breakdown of recorded incidents of bullying within schools – his understanding was that if it was a racial incident it would have to be clarified as to ‘type’ eg homophobic bullying.

ACTION - Issue sheet to be sent to Education asking for clarification of why if they record racist bulling they cannot record homophobic bullying?

Minutes of the last meeting were agreed.

4. ‘Drugs Use Among Gay Men’ – Gary Jefferson

Gary apologised for not being at the last meeting due to a misunderstanding. He had brought along copies of the report ‘Outing Drugs’ published by Gay Men’s Health in April 2005.

This report was funded by the Department of Health and managed and supported by The Centre for Ethnicity and Health at the University of Central Lancashire. Gay Men’s Health carried out an assessment amongst Wiltshire and Swindon’s gay and bisexual men to explore the nature of the community’s drug and alcohol use, its impact on sexual health and the local support services available.

As a result of this report, Swindon DAT has provided funding to train drug and alcohol workers in Swindon and the courses run have been fully booked.

Over 30% of those who completed the questionnaire are using more than 2 drugs regularly excluding alcohol and tobacco. Questionnaire asked if people wanted to stop taking drugs and asked what the barriers were to stop them using the available support services. The main reason given was confidentiality, then stereotyping, fear of homophobia, poor location, opening hours, assumptions about HIV status, fear of cost and lack of transport. Gary said they were starting to look at these issues. He circulated copies of various leaflets that would be widely available including one on Confidentiality. There would also be a local leaflet about services available in Swindon.

Chris queried the fact that only 95 people had responded to the questionnaire, but Gary said 60 of those 95 were in Swindon. He said it was difficult getting to people in gay venues in Wiltshire, had to offer people a gift voucher to get them to complete the questionnaire. It took about 20 months to complete the assessment and it was considered a good sample group, one of 95 projects across the country.

Nick said he didn’t think people were taking it seriously enough to fill the survey out. Gary said one of the problems was that people didn’t want to complete them because it was around drugs use and you are banned from gay venues if using drugs, also people didn’t want to fill them in when partners were present. People from visibly ethnic minorities didn’t fill them in at venues but some did on the internet.

Gary said copies of the report were in gay venues in Swindon and has been on line for the last 4 weeks. The report identified quite a lot of issues and made a number of recommendations to tackle them.

Nick asked if some of the leaflets Gary spoke about could be put in the Royal Oak. He said he would like to do what was done in Bristol - work with the Gay Community and organise something so that they knew the venue was safe and there was someone there they could talk to. Gary agreed and said he would also hopefully let him have copies of ‘True Vision’.

There followed a general discussion about how best to contact the gay community and the need to tackle the drugs issue in order to tackle health problems.

5. Report of the Hate Crime Forum – Robin Stannard

Homophobic Hate Crime for the first quarter of this recordable year (Apr 05- Jun 05) against the same period last year reveals an increase of 80%.

Do not think matters have got worse.

To put things into perspective there were 5 incidents reported last year, so far 1 (20%) has been detected (Charged/reported) whilst 3 remain (detected rule H – NFA by police due to there being insufficient admissible evidence to charge but the offender is known. This also covers incidents where the victim does not wish for a prosecution). There are 9 reported crime for this year, 4 detected (44.44%) with a further 3 detected rule H.

Last year 3 CRI (Crime Related Incidents) were recorded, the same as this year.

A CRI is where it is suspected that a crime has been committed but –

• The alleged victim (or person acting on their behalf i.e. third party reporting) declines to confirm this
• Or the alleged victim (or person acting on their behalf) cannot be traced
• Or the incident is reported by a third party other than the alleged victim
  AND
  in any of these cases there is no supporting evidence, to show on the balance of probabilities that a crime occurred.

Non crime, that is, incident reports rose 300% from 1 to 3 incidents whilst complaints against police dropped 100%, from 1 to nil.

July’s figures are similar – two offences, one detected reported last year. Two offences recorded this year. Two CRI’s recorded this year against none last. Two no crime incidents last year up to three this.

Robin said hate crimes are live and only recorded when completed. Since 7 July the overall Hate Crime rise is 35%. Homophobic Hate Crime did not change much. He asked if specific transphobic crimes should be identified – there had been 2 cases. Helen asked for them to be identified in future.

Robin asked if people had seen the Advertiser article ‘Town most dangerous to gay folk’? He said the police were not objecting to the report just to the headline that went with it. The Editor couldn’t give an explanation as to why the police were not contacted for a quote. Helen said they rang her at about 5.30pm and asked her for a quote.

Copy of the article to go out to those members not at the meeting.

6. Any Other Business

6.1 Gary asked Robin about ‘Drop-ins’ and whether he was starting to be approached? Robin said ’yes’ at the Cricketers but not at the Mail Coach. It was suggested the new landlord of the Cricketers should be invited to the next meeting and it was felt it was important to get him involved.

ACTION: Kathleen to invite the new landlord of the Cricketers to attend the next meeting (Nick to provide her with his name).

6.2 Nick said he would be very interested in any courses for landlords and licensees on tackling and handling vulnerable people. Gary suggested speaking to the Vulnerable Persons’ Unit. Some of them have been trained and they would know what is happening multi-agency wise. He would identify someone for Nick to speak to.

Gary advised that there was a new national guide for young people questioning their sexuality. Hopefully young people, not just men, will ask for help before getting into trouble. Nick said there needed to be people they could speak to in gay bars, right across the country, to tell them where to go. He said he would like to be involved.

6.3 LGBT Website:

Helen said that in the past Matthew had arranged for the website to be updated and asked if it was still going. Gillian queried why they had a separate website rather than having pages on the SBC website as part of the Council’s.

There was discussion about what exactly was wanted from the website, whether it should be independent or part of SBC’s Coalitions’ website with a link to the LGBT site. The main issue was updating the site because if this was not done people would stop using it. Gillian suggested that perhaps a member of the Coalition could link with Lee to get minutes etc on the site.

It was agreed to find out exactly what the contract was with Lee and a breakdown of how many hits there had been on the website during the past six months and make a decision at the next meeting.

6.4 Response regarding Reassignment Legislation – Gillian asked if the meeting was happy with the response so far?

It was agreed this issue was resolved for now but would have it as a future agenda item when further legislation is in place.

6.5 Gary advised that ‘True Vision’ resources are arriving in Swindon. Race Pack arrived Monday but the reporting packs are not expected until October.

7. Dates of the next meetings:

LGBT
7-9pm, Wednesday 12 October: CR2, Civic

Hate Crime Forum
7-9pm, Wednesday 9 November: CR2, Civic