London DDPO Hate Crime Partnership 2018–2023

The London DDPO Hate Crime Partnership was funded for 5 years between 2018 and 2023 by National Lottery Community Fund, 3 Guineas Trust and Trust for London, and has established a Pan-London partnership between Deaf & Disabled People’s Organisations (DDPO).

This partnership was unique and not only provided a collective voice for policy and campaigns but also provided capacity building to strengthen the network of support and strategic policy and campaigning work so no Disabled person needs to suffer alone if they experience Hate Crime.

In London, each strand of hate crime has organisations that focus on that one aspect of a victim’s identity. Currently, there is Tell Mama for Islamophobic related hate crime; GALOP for LGBT+ community, The Monitoring Group for the BAME community and CST for the Jewish community. This partnership was set up as the voice for Disabled people in London, campaigning for parity in the law, and raising awareness of Hate Crime against Disabled people. We have represented Disabled people at over 20 key meetings a year, to influence policy and commissioning decision makers, including the Crown Prosecution Service, Metropolitan Police Service, London Mayor’s Officer for Police and Crime and the London Assembly.

We worked closely with the CATCH Partnership via our DDPO partners; Real in Tower Hamlets, Choice in Hackney and Stay Safe East, led by Galop, who provide support across all hate crime strands. DDPOs involved have offered different levels of hate crime support including Hate Crime Advocacy, Peer Advocacy / Support, Awareness Raising, Third-Party Reporting Centres.

Our overall aims for the partnership included:

Improving the information flow about disability hate crime to other partners and stakeholders in the London hate crime sector, through regular communications and meetings.

Working collectively to provide consultation responses, policy submissions, calls for evidence and campaign asks to decision makers in London.

Supporting with research enquiries from academics and policy stakeholders to raise awareness of hate crime against disabled people.

Capacity building providing information, training and events relating to hate crime against Disabled people to DDPOs in London.

Providing emotional support to DDPO staff working with victims/survivors of hate crime, including specialist advocates, peer support advocates and other DDPO staff working in other non-hate crime services.

Developing and coproducing a range of anti hate crime training materials, aimed at non-DDPO frontline services for DDPOs to use in their local areas.

Building relationships with other organisations and people involved in anti hate crime work in London to raise awareness of the DDPO sector and issues affecting Disabled victim/survivors of hate crime to influence policy and practice.

We had the support of Anne Novis who was awarded an MBE for her tireless campaigning to get Hate Crime against Disabled people recognised and responded to appropriately. We had support and work for the partnership from Ruth Bashall who was CEO of Stay Safe East [link to SSE], also a key partner in our hate crime secondment project, who has been the expert in this area of work for decades, while campaigning and providing frontline services in Walthamstow and London-wide for Disabled victims/survivors of violent crime, including domestic violence and hate crime. Stay Safe East are also the only DDPO in London to provide Disability Advocates for people experiencing any type of crime.

We had tireless support from David Jenkins at Merton Centre for Independent Living [link to MCIL] who led on our hate crime secondment project as part of our capacity building work, who was responsible for developing and publishing two key manuals to support anti hate crime work; The hate crime advocate toolkit and the hate crime advocacy monitoring and evaluation handbook.

Over the years, as well as contracted work with Stay Safe East and Merton Centre for Independent Living, we also contracted work with Breaking out the Bubble [link to Bob page] who are experts in working with people with learning disabilities/difficulties, and worked with numerous independent consultants including Dr Laura Chapman, Kate Mercer from Black Belt Advocacy, Fisayo Fadahunsi from Filmanthropy, Barnet Unlimited, Wendy Haslam, Tam Preboye from Zilla Consultancy, Roffey Park Institute, Jackie Woods and Liz Mercer.

In the last two years of the partnership, we set up our Hate Crime Data and Insight Project [link to D&I page], as we realised that there was not any other organisation in London gathering data and insights on the anti hate crime work of DDPOs across London, which provided in-depth information based on primary and secondary research on issues affecting Disabled victims/survivors.

Towards the end of the project, we started to explore intersectionality issues based on the findings of the Data and Insight Project and the impact of media reporting of Disabled people involved in the criminal justice system.[link to D&I page]

The project is currently being externally evaluated by an independent consultant and we hope that the final report [link to final report] will aid DDPOs, commissioners, funders, stakeholders and anyone interested in anti hate crime work involving Disabled people to design, develop and fund services led by and for Disabled people.