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The report accuses the government of some very serious failings, saying that it has fallen ‘well below the stated ambition to do more than any other government before us to promote integration’.
Why was the review needed?
The independent report was commissioned by the government in July 2015 for the purpose of reviewing integration and opportunity in the UK’s most isolated and deprived communities in a bid to tackle extremism, and Dame Louise Casey (pictured above) was asked to produce it.
Dame Casey recently wrote in The Guardian: ‘As a nation, we are becoming ever more diverse, increasingly integrated, and more at ease with that difference too. Yet some communities are becoming more segregated at the same time. In some council wards, as many as 85% of the population come from a single minority background, and most of these high minority concentrations are deprived Pakistani or Bangladeshi heritage communities.’
It would be impossible to summarise the 199-page report in this blog, but the BBC report that in the report Dame Louise Casey accuses public bodies of ignoring or condoning divisive or harmful religious practices for fear of being called racist.
‘Misogyny and patriarchy has to come to an end.’
One of the themes in the report is that many communities within Britain have been allowed to become isolated, and one of the reasons this has happened is due to a reluctance to intervene in case there are negative connotations associated with this.
The alleged plight of women in Muslim communities is highlighted. Dame Louise says they are likely to be kept at home and increasingly unlikely to speak English. She encourages society not to fear being labelled Islamophobic or racist: ‘Misogyny and patriarchy has to come to an end.’
‘They (Muslim women) have poor English, little education, low confidence, and are reliant on their husbands for their income and immigration status. They don’t know about their rights, or how to access support, and struggle to prepare their children effectively for school.’
What recommendations have been made?
The followings recommendations were among those made to the government in the report:
Projects to boost cohesion, such as local IT courses and sport activities for children
Councils should regularly collect statistics on hate crime or deficiencies in English
A review of the "rights and obligations" of immigrants likely to settle in the UK
Funding for school projects that encourage children of different backgrounds to mix
More funding for local English language classes and a review of whether courses are reaching people who need them
Councils should investigate whether their housing policies help or hinder integration
New oath for public office-holders pledging "tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs"
British values
Another of the recommendations in the report is that schools should do more to promote and teach British values to help build integration, tolerance and citizenship.
A local Councillor in the north-west – Mudasir Dean – has agreed with the suggestion for the promotion of British values. Reacting to Dame Casey’s report, Dean said: ‘My personal belief is that British values should be taught in our schools from a primary school level and not just to new arrivals in the country but to people who were born here as well.
Raising awareness
The publication of the Casey Report is an important step towards equality and integration of all societies in the UK, if for no other reason than it raising awareness of the issues facing many parts of the country and bringing them into the public domain for discussion and debate.
With no awareness of particular issues, people can’t be expected to make progress in those areas.
This is another point made in the report. It states that not talking about segregation and other related issues only gives ‘ammunition to the extreme far-right and Islamic extremists’, who are the people ‘who set out to divide us’.
The Evening Standard reports that Labour MP Chuka Umunna, who chairs the all-party parliamentary group on social integration, agrees that division has bred extremism and is "sapping our communities of trust".
Train your staff
At flick learning we provide accredited awareness training for staff in two of the most prominent areas highlighted in the Casey Report – equality and diversity, and prevention of radicalisation. Subscribing with flick offers access to every single one of our stunning, unique and cutting-edge e-learning courses (as well as any we add in the future), plus downloadable guides and resources in the flick library. Interested? Take a look at our course list and sign up for a free demo today.
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