Community Liaison Officer
In 2004 Breckland Council agreed to host the post of Community Liaison Officer, a post which is funded by the Keystone Development Trust through Connecting Communities funding from the European Union.
This post was created, along with other posts hosted by other organisations in the district, to meet the following objectives:
- To increase the trust and confidence between minority ethnic communities and public authorities
- To increase access to public services and employment opportunities in the public sector for minority ethnic communities
- To raise awareness of public authorities on the needs and cultural requirements of minority ethnic communities , in order to ensure appropriate service delivery and employment practice.
The district of Breckland has a sizeable (estimated as up to 20,000 individuals) migrant worker community, mostly working in agricultural and manufacturing/processing industries. The majority of this community is believed to be Portuguese, with a growing number of nationals from the ascendent EU states such as Lithuania and Poland.
The main role of the Community Liaison Officer is to help people to access jobs and secure employment, although the post attracts a lot of enquiries about other areas of interest and concern. The target set for the post is to register 20 individuals per week to benefit from the EU funds, a target which has been consistently reached.
The Community Liaison Officer has carried out a series of interviews with Portuguese community members as part of ongoing work to address needs identified by community members. The initial findings indicate that language, employment, housing and childcare are the main areas of concern for the Portuguese community, and the project will attempt to address these issues in the coming months.
A number of local citizens contact the Community Liaison Officer (CLO) daily with general enquiries about the work she is doing, and are generally very supportive and interested in helping to promote social integration and assist with community projects.
Enquiries and requests for assistance from minority ethnic community members often fall into one or more of the following categories:
- Employment enquiries
- Employment exploitation by employment agencies
- Unemployment
- Debt (triggered by unemployment and exploitation)
- Training
- Education, English language courses
- Houses in multiple occupation (HMOs)
- Housing Benefits enquiries
- Housing - illegal evictions
- Housing – affordable accommodation
- Housing – rents
- Exploitation through charges made by private interpreters
- Childcare and education needs
- Family/relationship problems
- Portuguese consulate issues
- Crime – including
- Fraud and general crime reports
- Domestic violence
- Abandoned vehicles
- Traffic offences
- Money laundering
- Anti-social behaviour
- Immigration
- Benefits fraud
- Inland Revenue fraud
- Racism
- Illegal eviction
- Human traffic
Many migrant workers live in poor housing conditions, with many reporting high rents and overcrowded living conditions, often in HMOs suffering from disrepair. The CLO works with Breckland’s Private Sector and Housing Advice and Homelessness Teams to identify and tackle these problems. Often they experience difficulty in obtaining proof of their residency and rent, which can lead to problems claiming benefits such as Housing Benefit. There are also often language difficulties in understanding the requirements around claiming benefits, such as what documents are needed to support their claims.
A ‘Welcome to Breckland’ pack has been produced in Portuguese to signpost many of the services available to the community, and to hopefully avoid the confusion experienced by many ethnic minority community members. This pack is available from most advice agencies in the district, and from all Council offices.
In the Strategic Housing Service’s recent Audit Commission inspection, the work of the Community Liaison Officer was held up as an example of good practice, a reflection of all the hard work both she and the Council have put in since the post was created in 2004.
For further information, or to request a copy of the Welcome Pack, please call the Community Liaison Officer on 01362 656870
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