T3E Portfolio
Significant landmarks
Available as Race, Drugs, Europe, Vol.1, Les Cahiers T3E, No 3, this report is the first comprehensive report of its kind to rigorously contextualise its investigations across the different configurations presented by race relations legislation, public sector structures and drug policy as a reference framework for analysis. Its recommendations and findings remain viable today.
Semi-structured in-depth questionnaire schedules, consisting of over 50 questions, were devised for trustees, senior managers, front-line staff and clients to produce an individual profile, an organisational profile, a race-equality profile and a change profile, consisting of a wish-list of changes. These were used to carry out face-to-face interviews in more than 50 drug services across France, the Netherlands, Portugal and UK (where a representative sample of 22 services and organisations from the Greater London area participated). National umbrella organisations, such as ANIT (France), NeVIV (Netherlands), ANIT (Portugal) and SCODA (England) were also interviewed.
The most advanced social research software then available, including SPSS and NUDIST was used to analyse the findings. These and the principal recommendations at EU, national and organisational level were included in the report.
From the outset the orientation of our work took a problem solving approach as distinct from a standard setting one. This is because, in our experience, the standard setting approach ignores often appears as a top-down, abstract and mechanistic one. It evades the question of democratic accountability and encourages a ticking boxes exercise, and remains on paper only. By contrast the novel approach we adopted encourages democratisation, the identification of organisational, and a whole agency involvement in the development of change. Equality does not remain a bolted-on adjunct but becomes part of quality of service.
Wide consultation exercises on the draft report, its finding and recommendations, were undertaken in the participating countries with the actors and agencies involved in the four countries, prior to revising and finalising the report, which was eventually published in 1997.
The detailed recommendations, absent from the main report, have since been produced as a separate document called “Action Points for Change: what drug services and allied agencies can do to add the dimension of equality to quality”.
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