On Tuesday 28th November we are holding a virtual 'Safety at Night-time event', with guest speaker, Candida Turner - Community Safety Policy Specialist at Manchester City Council.
The purpose of the session is to to equip our colleagues with the knowledge and resources to stay safe on the streets at night – and to educate us all on what bystanders can do to help diffuse situations.
The event is a collaboration between three of our EDI Networks: Women's Network, EmbRace and LGBTQ+. However, we want to stress that this session isn’t just aimed at those colleagues who typically associate themselves with one of these networks, or considers themselves vulnerable/ part of a vulnerable group. We all have a duty of care not just to ourselves, but to our friends, family and colleagues and it would be great to equip ourselves with the know how, tips and advice on how to help those who may feel unsafe or find themselves in a potentially dangerous situation.
Here are just a small selection of statistics from the Office for National Statistics (August 2021):
- 1 in 2 women and 1 in 7 men felt unsafe walking alone after dark in a quiet street near their home.
- 1 in 2 women and 1 in 5 men felt unsafe walking alone after dark in a busy public place.
- 3 in 10 LGBT people (29 per cent) avoid certain streets because they do not feel safe there as an LGBT person. This number increases to more than two in five for trans people (44 per cent) compared to 26 per cent of LGB people who aren't trans.
- Disabled people felt less safe walking alone in all settings than non-disabled people.
By educating ourselves on how to keep safe at night we can help ourselves and our loved ones also feel safe.
It would be great to see as many of you as possible join this event on Tuesday 28th November. The calendar invite for this Teams event has been published to all colleagues.