MCFB, Sikh Sanjog and Intercultural Youth Scotland have expressed their concern to the City of Edinburgh Council’s Education, Children and Families Committee after being told on 26 February that their services targeting vulnerable and hard-to-reach Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) children and families have not been recommended for funding in the list of Children and Families Third Party Grants.

The funding in question is The City of Edinburgh Communities and Families Service Grant, which will cover the period June 2020 to June 2023. Recommendations were made by council officers from the Council’s commissioning department based on four areas of priority. 

MCFB, Sikh Sanjog and Intercultural Youth Scotland support families from pre-birth to teenaged years, including girls and young women, and cover a large demographic spread across the entire City of Edinburgh.  Each charity has noted in letters to committee members that, with the exception of a small youth work grant, none of the 23 grants that have been recommended are for services delivering targeted support to vulnerable and hard to reach BAME children and families.  Furthermore, they were keen to point out that the Scottish Government’s National Youth Work Strategy 2014-2019,  which  recently replaced the strategy in place since 2007, recognises that both universal and more targeted specific work have equal validity and importance.

 Anne Spiers, acting CEO of Multi-Cultural Family Base said:

“The proposed discontinuation of funding for this aspect of our service will have a devastating effect on in excess of 200 of our most socially isolated and excluded children in Edinburgh per year. The barriers that exist in accessing mainstream services for BAME families, including refugees and established communities, are complex and were well evidenced in our application for funding. MCFB’s Early Years’ Service has 19 years of continuous experience in addressing these barriers and our 4 Corners Project is breaking ground in promoting inclusion and tackling social isolation for young people in three areas of multiple deprivation across the City. I believe this will leave a significant strategic gap in the Council’s ability to fulfil its aspirations for a fair city “in which all forms of deprivation and inequality are reduced” (Vision for Our City, Andrew Kerr,  Chief Executive, City of Edinburgh Council).”

Trishna Singh, founder and director of Sikh Sanjog, which runs a well-established service supporting Sikh and many other minority Ethnic families including groups for girls and young women as well as mixed youth groups said:

“Our youth work provision has 30 years of continuous experience in addressing barriers for some of the most vulnerable and excluded BAME families in Edinburgh. Our long-standing youth work provision supports Inclusion and combats social isolation for young people from the Sikh community. The proposed discontinuation of funding for services such as ours will have a massively detrimental impact on the most socially isolated and excluded children and young people in Edinburgh.”

Khaleda Noon, founder and director of Intercultural Youth Scotland said:

"These recommendations have the look of a City clinging on to service delivery for its most vulnerable citizens. Councillors have been made to choose between long standing projects and new innovative services, such as Intercultural Youth Scotland, which aim to meet the needs of changing communities within Edinburgh. These stark choices will have long term impacts in many other areas and could create a future climate of entrenched disadvantage for minority ethnic communities, leading to poor educational and career attainment, crime, mental health problems and many other costly, destructive outcomes." 

Representatives from all three charities will attend a deputation at the City of Edinburgh Council Chambers on Tuesday 3 March where they will be presenting their case at the Committee’s meeting. A social media campaign #EqualEdinburgh has been launched across social media in the run up to this meeting. We would welcome all the support we can get, so please do follow our social media campaign and share and retweet our posts!