Gypsies to feed in to education and health surveys - Surrey

From Get Surrey

GYPSIES in Surrey are being invited to share their views on education, health and access to services as part of a lottery-funded project.

In the first initiative of its kind, Surrey Community Action is also asking service providers for their opinions on working with members of the travelling community.

One survey is being distributed to doctors, schools and voluntary organisations among others, while the other is being handed out to Travellers. It is hoped the feedback will be discussed by representatives of the different groups at a conference early next year.

Libby Minto, community development worker, is spearheading the project as part of her responsibilities of being a community development worker for the Surrey Community Action charity.

She said: “An important part of my role is to find out what's going on, where the gaps are and feeding back to service providers. Communities tend to get quite suspicious of services because one person might have had a very negative experience so they might not be very trustworthy.

“I’m hoping to break down those barriers. We hope to show that service providers know the community exists and they are understanding and appreciative of their culture.”

People can give their views on help given with housing, carers, domestic violence, physical disability and benefit support. Gypsies will be asked questions such as whether they’ve had positive or negative experiences with various services, to describe their reading and writing ability, whether they would like to attend college and to rate their health on a scale from one to 10.

The NHS, Surrey County Council, schools, libraries and voluntary groups will be involved in the other questionnaire which will be sent to frontline staff. It will ask whether there are difficulties when a member of the Gypsy and Traveller community wishes to access their services, whether they've visited sites and how they tell people about appointments.

Now that the Gypsy/Traveller group is a recognised ethnic category, the survey will also check if this is included in forms given to patients and service users.

Ms Minto said the ‘biggest gripe’ among Travellers at the moment is how they are presented by the national media and a hit Channel 4 show.

“They’re not like people in My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding – it’s the negative portrayal that really gets them down,” she added.

“There are still places like pubs with signs saying ‘no Travellers allowed’. People refuse to put posters up because it was advertising an event for Gypsies and Travellers.

“I find a lot of people in the communities just want to get on with their lives and do not want to be stereotyped.”

Ms Minto hopes half of the county’s travelling community will complete the questionnaires and a strong focus will be placed on health and education concerns.

She said: “We’ll get quite a wide audience hopefully. From what I have seen, there's a lot of positive work going on. Professionals are going out on site visits and work is going on.

“I hope promotional material comes out of it about the good work, and also more joined-up thinking.”

Social Information on Disability is working with Ms Minto on the surveys.

To complete the questionnaire for Travellers, visit the website at www.surveymonkey.com/s/7J2Z8H9.

Service providers can fill in their survey at www.surveymonkey.com/s/GypsyandTravellerAccesstoServices