Local support for BAME communities on Covid-19 health information

Haref has been working in partnership with Newcastle City Council, Northumbria Police and Riverside Community Health Project in a response to local community for information on Covid-19. Communities have told us they need easy to understand information about staying safe and social distancing and in easy to use formats.

Help us to get important information out to local communities

We developed a one page handout (see below) of the key messages people need, and worked with community members to make sure this is written in language that is easy to understand. These will be translated into different languages for everyone to share.

Videos have also been produced (see below) featuring members of the city’s Czech, Romanian, Roma, Bangladeshi, Pakistani and Indian communities with information on staying at home and how to stay well to support Newcastle’s diverse communities to follow Government guidance.

This works comes at a time when early data is being published that appears to show that BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) communities could be at a higher risk of experiencing Covid -19 complications in the UK.

Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre has found a third of UK patients who have contracted Covid-19 are from BAME groups https://www.icnarc.org/About/Latest-News/2020/04/04/Report-On-2249-Patients-Critically-Ill-With-Covid-19
Charity So white’ has launched its paper ‘Racial injustice in the Covid-19 response’ which calls for charities to put BAME communities at the heart of their coronavirus pandemic responses https://charitysowhite.org/covid19

It is really important that we all continue to work in partnership to support BAME communities to get the right information and advice to help reduce the impact of coronavirus on individuals and our communities.

Key messages

You can download our Key messages for local communities in English:

These will shortly be available in different languages.

Videos: coronavirus public safety messages

Please note: we are also adding these videos as separate posts on our Facebook Page so they can be shared more easily through Facebook in your community.

Councillor Irim Ali of Wingrove Ward helps translate important public safety messages into Urdu:

Councillor Habib Rahman, Sheriff and Deputy Mayor of Newcastle helps translate important public safety messages into Bengali:

Gabriela Caradonna, Family Project Worker at Riverside Community Health Project helps translate important public safety messages into Romanian:

Dr Anand, a retired GP and Spice FM radio presenter helps translate important public safety messages into Hindi:

Pardalian Baiculescu, member of the Penticostal Church Emanuel helps translate important public safety messages into Romani:

Petra Ondrova, Family project worker at Riverside Community Health Project helps translate important public safety messages into Czech

Andreea, John, Horatiu, Dana, Roxana and George, members of the Romanian speaking community in Newcastle help translate important public safety messages into Romani.