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Labour Motion:
Ending Stigma and Discrimination of the Care Experienced
Community
 
Hackney Council notes:
 
1. 
Care experienced people face significant barriers that impact them
throughout their lives.
2. 
Despite the resilience of many care experienced people, they too
often experience stigma and disadvantage;
3. 
Care experienced people often face discrimination and stigma across
housing, health, education, relationships, employment and in the
criminal justice system.
4. 
Care experienced people may encounter inconsistent support in
different geographical areas.
5. 
As corporate parents, councillors have a collective responsibility
for providing the best possible care and safeguarding for the
children who are looked after by us as an authority.
6. 
All corporate parents should commit to acting as mentors, hearing
the voices of looked after children and young people and to
consider their needs in any aspect of council work.
7. 
Councillors should be champions of the children and care leavers in
our care and challenge the negative attitudes and prejudice that
exists in all aspects of society.
8. 
The Public Sector Equality Duty requires public bodies, such as
councils, to eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment, and
victimisation of people with protected characteristics.
 
This Council further
notes:
9. 
That care experienced people are a group who are likely to face
discrimination.
10.Councils have a duty to put the
needs of people facing inequalities of outcome as a result of
socio-economic disadvantage, at the heart of decision-making
through co-production and collaboration.
11.Hackney Council’s Equality
Plan identifies looked after children, care
experienced people and care
leavers as a group who are “vulnerable because of life
experiences”
12.Hackney’s Equality Plan
states the Council will “ensure that services are
taking account of the needs
of these groups in policy and practice” by:
 
o 
including data and an analysis of the needs of looked after
children, care leavers and care experienced children in the
Council’s refreshed equality profile that is linked to
service planning and equality impact assessment guidance.
o 
developing the Council’s understanding of their needs through
sharing lived experience of inequalities and of council
services.
o 
identifying specific proactive actions that are also needed through
this needs assessment.
 
13.That looked after children, care
experienced people and care leavers have been included in the
Council’s new Equality Impact Assessment Guidance and forms,
due to being identified as a group of people facing inequality of
outcomes locally.
 
This Council
therefore resolves:
 
14.That in the delivery of the Public Sector Equality Duty the
Council includes care experience in the publication and review of
Equality Objectives and the annual publication of information
relating to people who share a protected characteristic in services
and employment, as outlined in Hackney’s recently adopted
Equality Plan.
15.That this Council will continue to treat care experience as if
it were a Protected Characteristic.
16.To encourage other bodies to treat care experience as a
protected characteristic until such time as it may be introduced by
legislation.
17.For the council to continue proactively seeking out and
listening to the voices of care experienced people when developing
new policies based on their views.
18. For the Mayor and Cabinet leads for
Children’s Services, and for Equalities to lobby the
Government to introduce legislation to recognise care experienced
people as a protected group.

 
Proposer: Cllr Anna Lynch
Seconder: Cllr Sophie
Conway