What she was most pleased about was the work that had been carried out in our schools:

All schools have a legal duty to ensure homophobic bullying is dealt with in schools (Education and Inspections Act 2006)

Last year all schools received from the Department for Children, Sscools and Families a 134 page guidance on Homophobic Bullying – Safe to Learn: embedding anti-bullying work in schools which is an excellent and well balanced resource that nonetheless pulls no punches and has been widely used by schools.

South Gloucestershire’s own Sex and Relationship Guidance for schools states that ‘all educational establishments should encourage a climate for pupils and staff that supports, values and understands diverse sexualities and rejects homophobia and homophobic bullying.’

Schools therefore have plenty of ‘official’ ‘permissions’ and encourages positively to address these issues at government and local level. Teachers and parents anxious about responding to pupils’ questions about, for example, same sex relationships should feel re-assured by this and the establishment and growing number of civil partnerships.

PAHC (Partnership Against Hate Crime) and Case review Panel to monitor.

This meets a dozen or so times a year in different groupings and closely monitors any reported racist, anti religious and homophobic crime.

The reports of its findings are used to help formulate policy and practice at many levels from local communities and their leaders to schools in conjunction with other organisations such as SARI (Support Against Racist Incidents) and EACH (below).

EACH (Educational Action Combating Homophobia) SLA plus work in schools

EACH works in an increasing number of schools and youth clubs leading meetings for parents, governors and staff, providing training materials and inputs for pupils and advice for staff and providing where necessary advice on specific issues and incidents.

We are especially proud of this group set up by young LGBT and facilitated by our own Children & Young People department.

The Council’s own Registrar Services contribute to the well-being of the LGBT community by carrying out civil partnership celebrations. In the lead-up to their introduction in 2005, staff training was especially important: the Council’s Registration Officer reported that they took great care in implementing the Act, and there has been no repeat of recent incidents in Islington [referring to the Christian registrar who refused to carry out same-sex civil partnership ceremonies]. The Registrar has had excellent feedback from customers.

The Chief Executive also singled out the work currently being carried between the Council’s Community Care & Housing Department and South Gloucestershire Primary Care Trust:

An important piece of collaborative work is currently being undertaken between the two organisation, together with THT, to produce a DVD for distribution to our schools in the early part of 2009. The DVD will consist of 4 x 40 second cartoons raising awareness of the issues surrounding HIV, and is aimed at Years 9 & 10 (ages 14-15).

The funding for this project is coming wholly from the ring-fenced AIDS Support Grant which the department receives from Dept of Health. (£10,000)

As a Council, we were very proud to have been externally assessed in our equalities work, and have achieved Level 3 of the LGA Standard. This us especially important to the LGBT community in South Gloucestershire because it acknowledges how the whole equality & diversity agenda is ‘deeply mainstreamed in our work’ (the assessors words, not mine). As part of our progress to achieve Level 4 in the autumn of 2009, we shall shortly be introducing the monitoring of sexual orientation as part of the core information we collect from staff, customers and service users. This process is not being undertaken in a vacuum, but we are actively consulting with trades unions, the LGB Forum and the newly established LGB Employees Group.