The Community Partnership Team have been engaging with NLs minority ethnic communities to understand needs and barriers around accessing free period products. It was clear that there was a low uptake. Through the engagement it became clear that many minority ethnic residents including New Scots, refugees, asylum seekers and students feel they are not entitled to take free products and are unlikely to go to a government building to access products. 

Lanarkshire Mosque and The Economic Forum for Family Empowerment Scotland are now Period Products pick-up points. This reflects the following key points raised.

Lanarkshire Mosque which has over 400 female students attending classes at the Mosque have agreed to be open to the community between 5-7pm to access products.

The service has also employed a minority ethnic female to engage with communities around this issue.

North Lanarkshire Licensing Board, North Lanarkshire Violence Against Women Strategic Group and North Lanarkshire Council undertook a survey to understand women’s views on their safety when using North Lanarkshire’s town centres. The survey was carried out in Coatbridge and Motherwell and the results informed the developing Town Centre Action Plans to help ensure women are able to access our town centres safely.

This initiative was part of the 16 Days Campaign 2023 - an annual international campaign of activism to tackle Gender-Based Violence that runs from 25 November, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, until 10 December, Human Rights Day.

The initiative was promoted by the Convener of the Licensing Board.

Historically, North Lanarkshire has had one of the lowest breastfeeding rates in Scotland. However, thanks to a focused three-year programme, the council has worked to transform attitudes and create a supportive culture for breastfeeding.

The initiative, which involved collaborating with various partners, saw the council become the first in Scotland to achieve the Breastfeeding Friendly Scotland Local Authority Award at the gold standard. 

Since the programme's launch, the breastfeeding rate at 6-8 weeks has increased by 8.8 percentage points, with a 30.4% breastfeeding rate now being achieved. This cultural shift is improving the health and wellbeing of babies and families across the area.

Through the Our Lives Research it was highlighted that some women from the Congolese community wanted to work but childcare was a real issue for them, On top of this the Acadamies Team were keen to engage with the newly settled Ukrainian people as a large scale recruitment exercise was taking place in Early Years to staff North Lanarkshire’s nurseries as part of a substantial workforce transformation. Undertaking outreach engagement with these communities enabled the NL Academies team to identify that there were a number of very suitable candidates - women with skills and experience from their own countries which would be a great asset to the work of North Lanarkshire. The team were able to make the case to Early Years for inclusion of the identified groups within the recruitment process – to argue that many of the women had worked in or indeed managed care of children establishments, had transferrable skills and to make the case for a more inclusive and diverse workforce.

Early Years embraced this and used a modified outreach recruitment process to support these candidates through the recruitment system. Many of the candidates reported that without the NL Academies team involvement they would not have been aware of the vacancies and would never have considered applying.   

43 interested individuals attended outreach recruitment sessions and took part in  workshops and professional dialogue, with  33 successfully appointed to Support Worker posts (including 3 males). Importantly for the Congolese women they were able to manage their own childcare responsibilities with the flexible working arrangements offered by these positions.

Through analysing the composition of our workforce, we recognised that employee diversity for some characteristics was disproportionately low in comparison to our local population. In particular, the recruitment of disabled people and minority ethnic people was highlighted as a cause for concern.  In 2020 only 16.4% of Minority Ethnic applicants were interviewed and only 25.7% of disabled applicants were interviewed (despite the guaranteed interview scheme in operation for any disabled candidate who met the essential criteria for a job).

In 2023 the Council changed its recruitment to an anonymous application process (except for high volume recruitment). In 2024 we saw the how this move has increased the % of disabled and minority ethnic applicants being interviewed. 22.57% of applicants from minority ethnic groups were interviewed (the same as the % for white people) and 33% of disabled applicants were interviewed.

However, any parity between minority ethnic people and white people drops off at the interview stage with 53% of white applicants appointed and only 14.8% of minority ethnic people appointed.  For disabled people it is 24.5%

Being able to decipher where this disparity occurs will allow us to take corrective action through our recruitment practices and support.