Equalities first victim at budget squeeze

[ThePan]

At work there is a developing liklihood that equalities considerations and service delivery will be massively reduced as the employer (large PS Trust) looks to save money. I am intending to resist this and maintain present services (esp to women) to users.

Can anyone advise on the best track to take in these issues? Has anyone been here already (there MUST be!), and what successful arguments did you roll out? Please?

can you give examples of what might be affected?

Legislation is usually one of my best weapons, not guidelines, or recommendations, but legislation compliance.

Additionally, I've seen quite a lot of services being devolved, shipped off or pushed out to charities, who HAVE to comply with equal ops etc in order to get and keep their funding, so there might be some argument there.

sorry to be vague, it depends on what is up for the chop and how...

thank you v much for the response! It's to do with services for women offenders, which were developed, and now are being 'pulled'. Their access to a 'centralised' resource means that in essence they now face bigger barriers, much more than single, male offenders who don't have the same demands in their lives. It's fairly discriminatory, and yes the answer should be in legislation BUT.. I am really unsure re the best way to tackle it.
I can get all liberally and tug at a sense of fairness, but I really want some schtick, if you see what I mean?...

ok, then you have a few options, or routes through.

first, can you evidence that women are more negatively affected by these changes, for example "centralising resources now means that only 1 in 8 women will have access to work training programmes, versus 1 in 3 men. Prior to centralisation, 1 in 4 women had access." that kind of thing. it will be data crunching and stats, but very effective.

you can also use anecdotal evidence/case studies from women affected by these changes to tell personal stories of the negative changes. i.e Client A has been imprisoned for 3 years and on release was not able to access work programme services because of the cut in provision. Here's Client A's story....

When you've got enough data and information, you can then file a report with whomsoever the powers that be are.

I'd also suggest getting in touch with various lobbying and campaigning groups for female offenders with your evidence and information. Do you have a union you can contact too?

Here's a few charities I found who may be interested:

BC Trust
Women in Prison
Clean Break

If you can't apply pressure effectively internally, then you are going to need to put the wheels in motion for a media campaign. In order to be successful, you'll need evidence, data and support from charitable groups/MP (or parliamentarian - Yvette Cooper is very hot on this issue and has been banging on at the government for over a year about the demonstrable and unbalanced impact the new government has had on women.

I think you might also get some good advice from the feminist boards on here if this is an issue specifically affecting women.

hope this helps.