Engaging the Somali Community in the Road Safety Agenda: A Process Evaluation from the London Borough of Hounslow

Abstract

In the UK the most disadvantaged in society are more likely than those more affluent to be injured or killed in a road traffic collision and therefore it is a major cause of health inequality. There is a strong link between ethnicity, deprivation and injury. Whilst national road traffic injury data does not collect ethnic origin the London accident and analysis group does in terms of broad categories such as 'white', 'black' and 'Asian'. Analysis of this data revealed the over-representation of child pedestrian casualties from a 'black' ethnic origin. This information led road safety practitioners in one London borough to map child pedestrian casualties against census data which identified the Somali community as being particularly at risk of being involved in a road traffic collision. Working with the community they sought to discuss and address road safety issues and introduced practical evidence based approaches such as child pedestrian training. The process evaluation of the project used a qualitative approach and showed that engaging with community partners and working across organisational boundaries was a useful strategy to gain an understanding of the Somali community. A bottom approach provided the community with a sense of control and involvement which appears to add value in terms of reducing the sense of powerlessness that marginalised communities often feel. In terms of evaluation, small projects like these, lend themselves to a qualitative process evaluation though it has to be accepted that the strength of this evidence may be regarded as weak. Where possible routine injury data needs to take into account ethnicity which is a known risk factor for road casualty involvement which needs to be continually monitored.

Assessing the state of the art in community engagement for participatory decision-making in disaster risk-sensitive urban development

“…History of poor relations of communities with decision-makers and urban planners [ 23 , 33 , 34 , 40 , 46 , 47 ] 6 12% 7 3. Community engagement is considered as a threat by communities due to discrimination, fear of exposure to authorities (over drug use, immigration status, or stigmatising illness), and engagement is seen as diverting existing funding into other initiatives [ 33 , 34 , 41 , 51 ] 4 8% 9 4. Communities’ lack of trust, respect, and confidence in the planning system [ 29 , 31 , 37 ] 3 6% 10 5.…”

“…Similarly, the participation of displaced communities in resettlement planning is also extremely limited, with city officials undertaking the whole process and only coming to the communities during displaced community registration [ 47 ]. In addition, some communities consider community engagement as a threat due to discrimination, fear of exposure to authorities (concerning drug use, immigration status, or stigmatising illness), and they see engagement as a means of diverting existing funding into other initiatives [ 33 , 34 , 41 , 51 ]. Apart from these highly cited barriers, there are seven barriers that represent the quality of existing relationships among communities and communities with decision-makers and urban planners.…”