CWJ ANTI-RACISM STRATEGY - updated March 2022

We have been developing our work as planned (see below) and in particular, we are very pleased to report that the mentoring scheme and internship programme have both proved to be invaluable to the women involved.

“Undertaking [The Azra Kemal Legal] internship has been invaluable as I have had the opportunity to work with amazing lawyers and campaigners seeking justice for women’s rights, which is an area that I hope to specialise in. Throughout this internship I have undertaken many tasks that have allowed me to put the skills I had gained from my education into practice and to develop them in a professional sense. This will help me when applying for jobs in the future.”

Sannam Kerley, CWJ Intern 2022

 Our mentorship scheme is currently supporting an impressive 113 women, and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.

“My mentor has been great! I have very recently been offered pupillage…thank you very much for letting me be a part of this scheme. It was hugely helpful.  Your tips massively helped me, and I am very grateful”

Vithyah Chelvam, mentee 2021/22

CWJ ANTI-RACISM STRATEGY MARCH 2021

This month, following International Women’s Day, we join with others in setting out how we intend to tackle the racism that many women face.

George Floyd’s death last year sparked world-wide protests regarding excessive force by police officers against black people. It led to a resurgence of the #sayhername campaign, highlighting the deaths of women such as Breonna Taylor, Sandra Bland and Atatiana Jefferson following police contact. All of the solicitors at CWJ have a legal background in bringing civil cases arising from police misconduct, including the unlawful use of force which disprortionately impacts on black people, and are acutely aware that racism is not exclusive to American police forces. 

The activism around police accountability also brought to the fore a discussion about how racism permeates society and organisations, including public bodies, private companies, charities and wider social interactions. This affects all aspects of the lives of Black, Asian and minoritised women.[1] The need for fundamental societal change is clear. 

CWJ’s work is focused around violence against women and girls and the failings of the state when it comes to their needs for protection and support. We are particularly conscious of how Black, Asian and minoritised women are adversely affected by racism within the criminal justice system and from many other state institutions. 

At CWJ we want to ensure that the anti-racism work we do is substantive and not performative. Our aim is to embed anti-racism inside our organisation, and affect change outside. Our anti-racism statement can be found on our here, and this strategy is an evolving process to be updated as it develops. The practical ways in which anti-racism is shaping our work now and into the future include the following:

Principle: Embed anti-racism in our organisational structure to ensure that it is addressed, implemented and monitored.
Action: We have set up an anti-racism sub-group consisting of a mixture of staff and Trustees, from Black, Asian and minoritised backgrounds and white, at both staff and Trustee level. The group meets on a regular basis and reports back to Board meetings. Anti-racism is a standing agenda item at Board meetings. We have shared literature about racism within the voluntary sector, which we received from other women’s sector organisations, with our staff and trustees so that we can educate ourselves further on this issue. 

Principle: Ensure we are a diverse organisation at every level, including Trustees, staff, consultants, volunteers. Monitor our recruitment processes and take action to address shortcomings around diversity and recruitment.
Action: We will analyse and publish annual data on our diversity and recruitment processes, and any actions to address shortfalls. We will conduct and publish a ethnicity pay gap analysis. Our pay gap percentage for 2020 is published here.

We will analyse and publish data for the lawyers on our Legal Reference Panel. Our data for March 2021 is here.

Principle: Ensure that our Black, Asian and minoritised staff have access to external support in relation to their workplace experience and clear routes by which to raise any concerns internally within the organisation.
Action: We have engaged a coach, leadership and workforce consultant whose specialism is race and gender equality. She is a British Asian woman and describes the focus of her work as identity, inclusion and well-being. Any member of staff can book sessions with her on an anonymous basis. She can provide a supportive space to discuss any work-related matters, for example vicarious trauma, work-related stress as well as racism issues. Information shared with her remains confidential.

Three of our trustees have volunteered to act as a point of contact for any staff member who wishes to raise concerns around racism. These three include one trustee of African heritage, one British Asian trustee and one white trustee. All staff are aware of this route to discussing issues informally. All staff are also aware of the organisation’s formal grievance procedure, which is in the office manual. 

The trustees will conduct an annual anonymous survey of staff well-being which will include issues about race as well as other issues affecting well-being such as workload and stress.

Principle: Ensure that our strategic litigation includes legal challenges on issues affecting Black, Asian and minoritised women.
Action: As part of our anti-racism strategy we are prioritising strategic litigation which engages issues raised by organisations run by and for Black, Asian and minoritised women. These include access to safe accommodation for survivors with No Recourse to Public Funds, funder requirement to embed a Prevent duty within frontline services, and procurement decisions which threaten the survival of ‘by and for’ organisations. We have also pursued legal challenges and widely publicised campaigns of black and Asian women and their families, for example the judicial review following the death of Jordain John-Baptiste and the appeal of Farieissia Martin against her murder conviction for killing an abusive partner.

As a small organisation we have limited resources and have to carefully consider what strategic litigation we are able to take on, when we are inundated with requests for assistance. We will give priority to strategic cases which benefit Black, Asian and minoritised women. In particular we will consider opportunities for legal challenges that relate to the intersection of racism and violence against women within the criminal justice system.

Principle: Ensure that our pro bono legal advice service is accessible to and accessed by survivors from Black, Asian and minoritised backgrounds. 
Action: We will monitor the ethnic backgrounds of the women we assist in our pro bono legal advice service and take steps to ensure we reach a proportionate number of survivors from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds. A breakdown of the ethnic background of survivors assisted in 2020 is here.

This is primarily a second-tier service where legal advice is provided by CWJ lawyers and external lawyers on our Legal Reference Panel to frontline support workers, rather than directly to survivors. We will continue to build relationships with organisations run by and for Black, Asian and minoritised women and to encourage them to make referrals for pro bono legal advice.

Principle: Ensure our training for frontline women’s service workers reaches by and for Black, Asian and minoritised women’s organisations.
Action: We offer our training free of charge to frontline womens’ services run by and for Black, Asian and minoritised women. We have taken steps to publicise our training to organisations run by and for Black, Asian and minoritised women through umbrella organisations and campaign groups. Since November 2020 we have provided such training to 12 organisations across England and Wales who are members of Imkaan.

Discussions during training sessions enable us to increase our understanding of the issues their clients face within the criminal justice system. This information will feed back into our strategic litigation and policy work.

Principle: Take positive action to promote entry into the legal profession by women from Black, Asian and minoritised backgrounds and to support those who are already in the profession.
Action: We have established a mentoring scheme for Black, Asian and minoritised women seeking to enter the legal profession, or who are already in the legal profession and seeking a mentor outside their own workplace.

43 female lawyers on our Legal Reference Panel have volunteered to act as mentors, a roughly equal number of solicitors and barristers. 56 law student have joined our scheme and we have matched the majority with an appropriate mentor, with the remainder on a waiting list.

The ethnic backgrounds of those who have volunteered to act as mentors so far are here.

Principle: Ensure that Black, Asian and minoritised women’s organisations are included in, invited to and have a voice in forums that we participate in.
Actions: We will continue to be mindful of this principle in all our work. For example:

When invited to give evidence to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) we noted that no by and for Black, Asian and minoritised women’s organisations had been invited to share their expertise and give evidence on how their client groups are affected. We made public representations on this at the inquiry. As a result IICSA invited submissions from such groups and we facilitated two by and for specialist women’s organisations to give evidence. 

Within a forthcoming issue on femicide for the magazine Inquest Law, which is widely read by legal practitioners, including Coroners and policy-makers, we ensured that a piece appeared on migrant women’s experiences around data sharing between police and the immigration service, and the fact that Domestic Homicide Reviews do not require data to be gathered on the deceased’s immigration status.

Within our webinar programme for lawyers on our legal reference panel we included a session on the experiences of Black, Asian and minoritised survivors with speakers from two frontline ‘by and for’ services.

[1] Throughout this strategy we refer to Black, Asian and minoritised women. We know that language matters, that labels are always problematic and that there are differences of opinion on the most appropriate wording, including within CWJ. In using this expression we refer to political Blackness, we also include Asian to provide recognition to our own staff, and “minoritised” to represent the fact that black and brown people are a majority globally but become a minority in the UK, and also in recognition of other groups who are very much part of the ‘by and for’ sector such as Latin American women, Roma and traveller women, Turkish, Eastern European and others.

Our Anti-Racism Statement can be read here