Young People Encouraged to Report Hate Incidents

A campaign aimed at encouraging people, particularly young people, to report hate incidents is being held in Leicestershire.

Young people are the focus for the “Don’t Wait, Report Hate” campaign which will see the County Council and its district partners run a variety of awareness raising activities between January 24 and 28.

Hate incidents can be physical, written or verbal abuse and can take many forms where a person is targeted because they are seen as being different. Anyone can be a victim of hate because of their age, disability, gender, race, religion, belief or sexual orientation.

On Thursday a leaflet and poster championed by CYCLe (The County Youth Council for Leicestershire) and developed by North West Leicestershire Youth Council will be launched at a special event at County Hall, which will be attended by young people and local young people’s author, Bali Rai.

Awareness raising events will also be held in schools across the county during the week. As part of the drive to encourage young people to report hate incidents, work is also progressing on the production of a young person friendly report hate form which will be hosted on The Jitty website – www.thejitty.com

Jess Murtagh (17), from North West Leicestershire Youth Council, worked with other young people to help promote hate incident reporting.

Jess and her peers interviewed other young people at Coalville’s Picnic in the Park event last summer to ask their views on the subject. They then worked with Victim Support and the County Council to look at developing a more young people friendly form and leaflet to promote the idea of reporting hate incidents.

Jess said: “It is great that young people have had a real say in this, that our views have been listened to and that a really good piece of work has come out of it that we continue to promote through schools and youth groups.”

Joe Orson, County Council Cabinet member for Safer Communities, said: “It is important to recognise that hate incidents and hate crimes cause a great deal of harm to victims’ lives, their families’ lives and the community at large.

“The commitment shown by CYCLe is to be commended on this very important area of work.

“The development of a form for young people to report incidents and the leaflet and poster on “Don’t Wait, Report Hate” gives young people the option to tell someone and get support and advice when reporting an incident.

“It is good to see agencies working together to promote and encourage people to report hate incidents.”

The young people friendly form, leaflet and poster are available from www.thejitty.com

For further information, or to report an incident, contact the Hate Incident Monitoring Project (HIMP).

The HIMP report hate incident on-line form is available at www.leics.gov.uk/reporthate or centres across the county (details are on the website), including any district or borough council. Alternatively call (HIMP) 0116 305 8263 for more details.

For an easy to use form/guidance notes for people with learning disabilities, visit: www.betterlives.org.uk