Photos © Migration Yorkshire

Roma in Doncaster

Mapping services and local priorities

South Yorkshire Roma project

Report 5 of 7

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Acknowledgements

This report was part of a wider South Yorkshire Roma project funded by the Big Lottery Fund. It was written by Ewa Jamroz and Dr Pip Tyler in January 2017.

We would like to thank everyone who was involved in the project for their contributions. In particular we would like to acknowledge the following people:

Our Roma champions: Michal Bily, Olina Fuseini and Terezia Rostas, as well as Phil Martin at the University of Salford who worked with them

Members of Roma communities in South Yorkshire who participated in the project

Staff and service providers across South Yorkshire who participated in the project

Our steering group members: Professor Phil Brown, University of Salford and Colin Havard, Sheffield City Council

Our team at Migration Yorkshire who helped us in many and various ways to deliver the project, in particular: Nahida Khan, Bill Dennis, Dave Brown, Nicola Baylis, Dinah Beckett, and Katie Deighton.

Migration Yorkshire is a local authority-led regional migration partnership. We work with national government, local government, and others to ensure that Yorkshire and Humber can deal with, and benefit from, migration. We work with agencies across the statutory, voluntary, community and private sectors to help support the delivery of high quality services to migrants in a way that benefits everyone living in local communities.

Migration Yorkshire Level 2, Leonardo Building, 2 Rossington Street, Leeds, LS2 8HD

Tel: 0113 3788188 E-mail: admin@migrationyorkshire.org.uk

Website: www.migrationyorkshire.org.uk Twitter: @migrationyorks

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Contents

1. The context of this report in the South Yorkshire Roma project 4

2. Existing reports of Roma in Doncaster 6

3. Service mapping 9

4. Local priorities 11

5. Recommendations for future work in Doncaster 13

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1. The context of this report in the South Yorkshire Roma project

Aims of the project

Migrant Roma are one of the newest communities in South Yorkshire. Important work is already being done in some local areas to explore what this means and respond to the needs of whole communities where new arrivals are making their home.

Migration Yorkshire has led a short project to bring policy makers, Roma, non-Roma people and organisations together to share information and discuss what’s working and what isn’t. We also explored what still needs to be done to reduce the exclusion of Roma populations and to foster positive integration across South Yorkshire communities.

Key messages from the project

There are three messages from the whole project we would like readers to go away with:

1. Engagement and trust with Roma service users could be developed further by designing interventions that build on Roma priorities. The top priorities of Roma in this project concerned employment or their children. Future projects could consider being designed around these in a range of ways.

2. There are significant gaps in the knowledge of many staff in statutory services and among the host community about migrant Roma living in their local areas. Building up their knowledge, understanding and engagement with Roma as service users, colleagues and neighbours could improve Roma access to mainstream services and improve relationships within local communities.

3. Services need to react quickly to changes that are occurring in Roma communities. Changes include increased diversity among Roma service users, less transience, and increased precariousness in terms of work, income and reception by local communities. These could provide opportunities for engagement, such as providing support to document individuals’ residency as the UK prepares to leave the EU.

Research methods

The data for this project was collected using a variety of methods between May 2016 and January 2017: a ‘launch event’; a survey of local services; local meetings (including two in Doncaster); and, Roma-led focus groups (including one in Doncaster). Roma from Slovak, Czech, Latvian and Romanian Roma communities in South Yorkshire have been present at each of these project events. In total, over 80 services and 79 individual Roma were involved in the project. This data was supplemented by information collected during desk research, including a literature search and online information about local service provision.

Given the short-term nature of some projects, services and funding streams, the information presented here is a snapshot of activity during 2016; some of the information presented in this report may have subsequently changed.

More detail on the project methodology can be found in the mapping report for South Yorkshire as a whole (Report 3: Roma in South Yorkshire: mapping services and local priorities).

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This report

Roma in Doncaster is one of the local reports for the project. We recommend reading it alongside the South Yorkshire reports for the project (a list of all the available reports is provided on the back page).

We begin this report by outlining some of the available reports mentioning Roma in Doncaster. We then provide an analysis of existing service provision for Roma across Doncaster. We outline some of the local priorities expressed during our meetings with Roma and local partner organisations in Doncaster during this project. Finally, we present a set of recommendations for working with Roma in Doncaster in the future, grounded in the consultation and discussions held during this project. They are not a guarantee of success, but are a suggested way forward based on a combination of Roma priorities and service experiences.

We hope that this report and the three key messages of the overall project could be discussed and considered in the future plans of local services and decision-makers, for the benefit of all local residents.

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2. Existing reports of Roma in Doncaster

Roma communities have been settling in Doncaster since at least 2008. At that time, the local authority in Doncaster reported significant numbers of recently arrived Roma migrants1

and was aware of at least 200 Roma adults settled in their localities.2 The existence of a ‘sizeable’ migrant Roma community in Doncaster was also mentioned in a later report to the European Commission in 2011.3 Some local statutory agencies recognise the presence of Roma communities in South Yorkshire (Police in 20144 and Health in 20155) but not in Doncaster specifically (instead they mentioned Rotherham and Sheffield in this context).

In terms of nationalities, Slovak, Czech and Romanian were understood to be dominant Roma nationalities across the UK in the 2009 European Dialogue report. This seems to also be the case in Doncaster, as recent employment research specifically mentions the presence of Czech and Slovak Roma here.6 There may also be a growing Romanian Roma population, since recent data shows that Romanian became a dominant nationality of new arrivals to Doncaster in 2014 and 2015 (with 947 and 1,640 registering for national insurance numbers respectively);7 while this dataset does not record Roma separately, some of these new arrivals are likely to be of Roma ethnicity.

Eastern European migrants living in Doncaster, including members of Roma communities from the Czech Republic and Slovakia, are known to have worked through employment agencies in low-skilled temporary jobs such as factory and warehouse operatives, drivers, construction workers and cleaners. These migrants have reported lower earnings due to hidden deductions made by employment agencies for transport costs or breaks, compared with locals performing the same jobs but working for employers directly.8

There are some positive examples of Doncaster Council’s engagement with new Roma communities in the early years of Roma settlement around 2008/09. They include the employment of Roma in supporting roles in schools (shown to improve ascription of Roma pupils as well as their attendance and attainment)9 and inviting Roma dance groups or bands to participate in GRT History Month and other extracurricular activities.10 These and other activities EU migrants were involved in (such as advice work and cultural awareness

1 Yorkshire and Humber Regional Migration Partnership (2010) Migration Impact Fund in Yorkshire and Humber: ‘What we

did, and what we learned’ End of Project report. www.migrationyorkshire.org.uk/userfiles/file/aboutus/mif_yorkshireandhumber_finalreport_2010.pdf 2 European Dialogue (2009) The movement of Roma from new EU member states: A mapping survey of A2 and A8 Roma in

England: Patterns of settlement and current situation of the new Roma communities http://equality.uk.com/Resources_files/movement_of_roma.pdf 3 Gary Craig (2011) The United Kingdom: The Roma Studies of national policies.

www.york.ac.uk/inst/spru/research/pdf/EURoma.pdf See p.ii 4 South Yorkshire Police (2014) The diverse population of South Yorkshire.

www.southyorks.police.uk/sites/default/files/The%20diverse%20population%20of%20South%20Yorkshire%20Oct%202014.pdf 5 Public Health England (2015) South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw oral health needs assessment 2015

www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/463067/South_Yorks___Bassetlaw_oral_health_needs_assessment.pdf 6 D. Sporton (2013) ‘“They control my life”: The Role of Local Employment Agencies in East European Migration to the UK’,

Population Space and Place 19, 443–458 7 Migration Yorkshire (2016) New arrivals to Doncaster in 2015. Migration Yorkshire: Leeds.

www.migrationyorkshire.org.uk/userfiles/attachments/pages/669/doncaster-newarrivals-2015-v2.pdf 8 D. Sporton (2013) ‘“They control my life”.

9 European Dialogue (2009) The movement of Roma from new EU member states, p.101

10 GRTHM (2009) Gypsy Roma Traveller History Month: 2009 Report

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sessions) were funded by the Migration Impact Fund;11 when the Fund ended in 2010 the majority of these projects also ceased.

More recently in 2014 and 2015, the national and local media reported on local community tensions in Hexthorpe between Roma, other Eastern Europeans and the indigenous population.12 They reported several hundred Roma migrants had moved into the area following changes in access to the labour market for ‘A2’ nationals (from Bulgaria and Romania) at the start of 2014. Roma were accused of anti-social behaviour (noise, fly-tipping and littering). In response, activity by far right groups took place several times that year. Subsequent reports of incidents in Hexthorpe were reported involving Polish, Slovak and Roma migrants13 and by Britain First.14

To reduce anti-social behaviour and improve tenancy management in Hexthorpe, in December 2014 the local authority approved the introduction of a selective licencing scheme, which was implemented in October 2015.15 This scheme requires landlords to apply for a licence showing that properties they rent are of the required standard, and requires their tenants to sign documentation relating to waste management and anti-social behaviour.

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Yorkshire and Humber Regional Migration Partnership (2010) 12

‘Angry villagers warn of riots unless police act on Roma: Residents say they will take law into their own hands if authorities do not take action over anti-social behaviour’, Daily Mail, 13 June 2014. www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2656728/Angry-villagers-warn-riots-unless-police-act-Roma-Residents-say-law-hands-authorities-not-action-anti-social-behaviour.html; ‘Roma migrants cause terror for South Yorkshire residents’, Express, 14 June 2014. www.express.co.uk/news/uk/482347/There-will-be-blood-say-victims-of-Roma-terror ‘Slovaks dumping dispute in Doncaster village’, Doncaster Free Press, 13 June 2014 www.doncasterfreepress.co.uk/news/environment/slovaks-dumping-dispute-in-doncaster-village-1-6671059 13

‘Fears of gang violence grow in Doncaster village’, Thorne and District Gazette, 14 July 2015. www.thornegazette.co.uk/news/crime/fears-of-gang-violence-grow-in-doncaster-village-1-7357196 14

TELLMAMA (2014) ‘Britain First Supporters Shout ‘Roma Gypsy – Off Our Streets’ in South Yorks’, 19 October 2014; ‘Britain First, the Roma, and More Agitation from the Extremist Group’, 19 August 2014 http://tellmamauk.org/tag/hexthorpe/ 15

DMBC (2016) Selective Licensing: Hexthorpe www.doncaster.gov.uk/selectivelicensing

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3. Service mapping

Services

This project identified 13 services in total that are particularly relevant to Roma in Doncaster. Information about these services is illustrated in the infographic on the preceding page.

We identified 11 services that currently work directly with, or are accessed by, Roma communities in Doncaster.

There is also informal sport activity run by a Roma individual who is not part of any specific organisation.

One disability service works with the whole community in Doncaster. Since they do not monitor ethnicity of their clients, they were unable to confirm whether or not they have Roma clients.

Four further services do not currently engage specifically with Roma communities but are interested in doing so; these cover two NHS services, an ALMO and a third sector organisation.

All of these services identified are based in Doncaster itself, although South Yorkshire police work across the whole of South Yorkshire.

Services identified cover different general areas of work. We are aware of half a dozen services that work with Roma young people up to age of 25, with activities covering education, youth work, neighbourhood/integration initiatives and employment skills. Advice, including welfare and benefits, is also a prominent area of work with adult Roma, with one organisation seeing over 100 Roma service users each week.

There are several projects that have specifically targeted Roma communities, such as:

a youthwork organisation

the council Virtual School for Gypsy Roma Travellers (GRT)

Roma-led informal football sessions

a sports project which had a project open to all backgrounds but reported only Roma service users

a musical education service recently had a Roma project, but the specific funding ended and now its work with Roma communities is sporadic.

The ongoing Roma specific projects are outreach-type services, focusing on young people. The majority of other services are not age or gender-specific. A small number of Roma are known to work within these services in Doncaster: the council has employed Roma staff in the Virtual School for GRT and linked Ethnic Minority and Traveller Achievement Service (EMTAS).

The GRT and EMTAS teams have worked with other services on a number of initiatives. These include a music Roma project with the musical education project and with local schools, and a conversational English class based in a children’s centre. Another example of local partnership working was a youth club run by the local authority from a church’s premises in Hexthorpe (this has now closed due to health and safety concerns).

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Roma communities

The services able to provide data on Roma service users all confirmed the presence of Slovak Roma in Doncaster. Several also reported Czech Roma clients, suggesting a larger Czech population than elsewhere in South Yorkshire. There is some evidence of smaller Polish and Romanian Roma populations locally.

There are no estimates of the Roma population resident in Doncaster. However, given the information on the number of services and their service users provided in our service survey, and in comparison with the situation in other parts of South Yorkshire, it seems realistic to suggest that the Doncaster Roma population is in the hundreds. This is underlined by the fact that the GRT team at the council have identified almost 200 (mainly Slovak) Roma pupils attending Doncaster schools.

Most geographically targeted work with Roma is focused on Hexthorpe. A few projects deliver services in other locations such as Hyde Park and central Doncaster. Statutory services in particular usually have a broader remit covering the whole of Doncaster, even if they focus on particular localities.

This information on Roma populations in Doncaster, in terms of nationality and geography, reinforces our understanding of Roma living in certain localities, namely Hexthorpe and Hyde Park.

However, it is possible that smaller numbers of Roma live in other parts of Doncaster but have not been recognised as doing so – that is, we only found what we have looked for. We do not know whether the small numbers of Polish and Romanian Roma attending services live in the same areas as Slovak and Czech Roma. Some Roma children are known to attend schools outside of these two areas which may indicate broader Roma settlement, but may also reflect the fact that pupils may attend schools outside their neighbourhood. Similarly, Roma may also have been effectively displaced beyond Hexthorpe following the introduction of the selective licensing scheme there, as there are suggestions that landlords could be moving tenants outside of Hexthorpe where such restrictions do not exist.

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4. Local priorities

During the local meetings for the project in Doncaster, services and Roma attendees were able to highlight the areas of our findings that they wanted to comment on, as well as being invited to state what they felt the priorities were for action. Key issues discussed are summarised below. Clearly these summaries reflect the contributions of those who attended and the priorities they raised.

Roma representatives at the meetings wanted to prioritise:

o educational support for Roma in terms of language/bilingual support across a range of ages (from nursery upwards) in education settings

o employment opportunities that are sustainable, and include self-employment and entrepreneurship

o a community centre in Hexthorpe. This could provide leisure activities (such as music, dance and cultural celebrations) particularly for young people, develop new activities, and link to appropriate services

o Roma workers/advocates within services. It was hoped that lessons could be adapted from Roma-led youth clubs that are understood to work well elsewhere (e.g. Bradford and Glasgow). It was noted there had been some recent recruitment of Roma to EMTAS posts.

There was support for the research findings on employment and engagement needs.

o Services supported the principle of employing Roma workers; there were some recent successes in recruitment although several services had struggled recruiting Roma workers. It was suggested that different types of existing employment support work could be drawn together.

o It was recognised that Roma need support in understanding services available locally in an appropriate format through an initial point of contact, and also to persevere on behalf of Roma where an issue needs following up. This happens to some extent at the Junction, but they saw a further need for intensive work with families with multiple issues.

o Engagement was discussed particularly in relation to local monitoring data, communicating with parents, take-up of ESOL, difficulties in engaging Roma in preventative health services and in interacting with the police. It was noted that Roma seem more comfortable with identifying as Roma if requests for information were explained by a Roma worker, and ideas to develop audio versions of service information were discussed.

There are some local tensions between Roma and non-Roma communities, particularly in Hexthorpe. This is also a priority, particularly for the local authority. Low-level anti-social behaviour and provision of activities for young people seemed important to address in this context. At times in this project, we also observed occasional stereotyping among some staff from local services, who talked in a derogatory way about Roma communities.

Relatedly, it seems that Hexthorpe in particular is the ‘first port of call’ for new arrivals, and therefore there is some regular population churn. This means there are always some people arriving and others moving on rather than settling permanently. This has led to some frustration among agencies who do not see the impact of the

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engagement and information-sharing they have done in this area, such as provision of waste management information in different languages with audio translation.

Some local successes include an informal Roma-led football group for young Roma, engagement with Roma at conversation clubs and at an advice centre in Hexthorpe (but perhaps lacking the expertise to meet advice needs, which may be improved if Citizens’ Advice hopes to open an office in Doncaster come to fruition). In terms of statutory work, the GRT team seems successful and works with other organisations, and the selective licensing scheme is raising standards, although this may be displacing ‘rogue’ landlords and their tenants to other areas of Doncaster. However, the short-term nature of funding has meant some previously successful initiatives (such as a music and dance initiative) have had to close. It was hoped that there could be more celebration of Roma culture, such as through schools or through Roma food.

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5. Recommendations for future work in Doncaster

1. Draw on the recommendations from the project overall

The main recommendations for South Yorkshire overall in this project also apply to Doncaster:

1. Prioritise employment interventions 2. Use interventions with young people to engage with other family members 3. Aim to encourage mixing or interaction between communities 4. Aim to empower Roma communities as a project outcome 5. Use locations that are already trusted by Roma communities 6. Support (statutory) staff to gain more knowledge, understanding and confidence to work

with Roma service users and to communicate with them effectively. 7. Think through any relevant conundrums that affect local services16 8. Share practice knowledge among services in relation to Roma residents. 9. Tailor new work for the local context.

The next recommendations follow directly from this final bullet point (to tailor new work for the local context) and are based on our understanding of Doncaster specifically.

2. Build on existing or recent successes

There was a confidence among service providers in Doncaster that suggests experience and understanding of what works in relation to Roma in this area. This experience may be undermined by the short-term nature of funding, with a number of projects that have been seen as successful (as described earlier) but whose funding has ended. This can also create some disillusionment among Roma communities.

It would be worth ensuring that practice knowledge from concluded projects is recorded and shared with new staff or organisations. It would also make sense to ensure that projects that successfully engage with Roma communities at the moment are recognised and can facilitate engagement with other services wanting to work with Roma. New projects might, for example, use the same site or send a representative to existing activities to observe and learn from their experiences.

3. Draw in organisations that do (or want to) work with Roma

Some organisations are interested in Roma issues but do not have much experience of working with them in Doncaster. For example, NHS services, Doncaster CVS, and the ALMO all work across Doncaster and are keen to engage with Roma (and all participated in this project), but do not currently do direct work with Roma clients. It is worth encouraging these organisations to get involved in local meetings, funding bids, practice sharing etc., and to consider siting their engagement work in places where Roma communities already engage. It is also worth drawing in other local statutory services that will inevitably have Roma service users, such as local schools, to share their expertise.

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Examples of these conundrums are discussed in Report 3 for the whole of South Yorkshire: how can we take one approach with a diverse group like Roma?; are Roma a completely unique client group?; reconciling the need for safe social spaces and for ‘mixing’; interpreters and communication in the Roma language; spokespersons for Roma; tackling ‘difficult’ issues around safeguarding and exploitation; different priorities for Roma and services.

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4. Respond to the newly-identified priorities of Roma participants

While the overall recommendations were led by Roma participants’ contributions across South Yorkshire, it is also important that Doncaster considers the specific priorities raised by Roma participants who live locally. For example, Roma requests were for educational and employment support, a Roma community centre to provide leisure activities and as a contact point with services (echoed by focus group participants), and more Roma workers. This does not mean all of these must be provided, but it would be helpful to respond to Roma priorities and explain relevant local decisions taken that affect Roma communities.

At the moment, Slovak and Czech Roma are most engaged and visible to services in Doncaster, while Polish and Romanian Roma are less well-known and may not be accessing services. Services could continue to develop monitoring data and share local knowledge as this could help to develop understanding of the Roma communities in Doncaster, how their socio-economic characteristics vary and to be able to consult them where appropriate.

There are relatively few Roma workers among Doncaster services of which we are aware, although there has been some recent recruitment of Roma at Doncaster council. There may need to be some work to enable members of Roma communities to take formal, paid roles in organisations, and explore why recruitment has proven difficult among some statutory agencies.

5. Dovetail new work with existing approaches and strategies

Doncaster’s approach to Roma seems to have focused on enforcement activity (such as selective licensing, dealing with anti-social behaviour and drugs etc.) and with most activity based in Hexthorpe, where Roma communities are known to have lived for some time.

This is not the whole picture in Doncaster. For example, we know that there are Roma living in Hyde Park. Further, a relatively new team (Virtual School for GRT) has identified and enabled some engagement work with Roma families in both Hexthorpe and Hyde Park.

Local stakeholders might want to consider developing an approach together that incorporates these different types of intervention activity and recognising that Roma communities may live in a number of different areas of the city. An agreed strategy might also help to present a consistent, unified and constructive position on Roma when working with external agencies and in local communities.

These recommendations for working with Roma in Doncaster are grounded in the discussions held during this project, providing a suggested way forward based on a combination of Roma priorities and service experiences. We hope that this report and the three key messages of the overall project will be discussed and considered in the future plans of local services and decision-makers, for the benefit of all local residents.

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The series of reports for the South Yorkshire Roma project

This report is the fifth in a series of reports for the South Yorkshire Roma project:

South Yorkshire reports

Report 1: Executive summary Report 2: Roma experiences of living and working in South Yorkshire Report 3: Roma in South Yorkshire: mapping services and local priorities Local reports

Report 4: Roma in Barnsley Report 5: Roma in Doncaster Report 6: Roma in Rotherham Report 7: Roma in Sheffield

These are available to download from www.migrationyorkshire.org.uk