Push in Bracknell for ethnic minorities to get vaccinated

Bracknell Forest Council’s communications and marketing department has been reaching out to Gypsy Roma Travellers, Africans and Eastern European groups in an effort to enhance vaccination cover against coronavirus.

The department’s strategy for reaching these communities was laid out at a meeting of Bracknell Forest Council’s local outbreak engagement board on Tuesday (March 1).

During the meeting, councillors received a presentation by Alayna Razzell, the councils head of communications, about the efforts being made to encourage ethnic minorities to get vaccinated.

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She said: “Our engagement team have been really busy over the last month, they’ve progressed the use of Facebook to reach a wider network of groups and demographics, and they are now in contact with some Gypsy Roma Traveller contacts, who are now sharing that information personally with their contacts and communities about how to keep safe, what the vaccination means and why gthey should consider having it.

“We’ve made some further links with some Bulgarian groups in Sandhurst, some younger Romanian people and also some people in Polish support groups across social media, and they’ve also made some links with some African communities in Bracknell Forest which enables us to speak directly to those people and understand why they might be feeling a little bit hesitant about vaccination, how we can help them and how we can move forward.”

In particular, the council’s engagement team has reached out to Ghanaians and Nigerians.

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Council statistics show that 238 people were vaccinated from a bus over eight days, with a majority being under the age of 45 and 25 per cent of those vaccinated being from Black Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) backgrounds.

Alayna Razzell added that the recent vaccination bus campaign was ‘really successful’ and something the council would like to repeat.

Councillor Marc Brunel-Walker (Conservative, Crown Wood) commented: “It’s particularly great to see the engagement with the Roma community and some of the other, harder to reach communities is working and to see that message being shared amongst them personally, I think that’s a great sign, so well do to all of those involved in that.”

As a whole, 85.7 per cent of people in Bracknell Forest have received a first dose of a coronavirus vaccine, with 81.2 per cent of the population receiving a second dose, and 64.9 per cent have had a booster jab.

That’s according to figures from Monday.

Finally, Alayna Razzell said that her staff had looked into whether there is a place to get accurate information on where to get tests and vaccinations, an issue which was raised at a local outbreak engagement board meeting in January.

However, there was no such information hub, so she said her and her team have focused on ways people can get tests and vaccinations, rather than risk having outdated information.