Following racial disturbances in 2001, the Home Office set up the Community Cohesion Review Team to identify good practice, key policy issues and new and innovative thinking in the field of community cohesion. The team highlighted the positive and negative roles that the media can play in framing the perceptions of local people in strengthening the sense of community or in fuelling tensions. This module has been produced jointly by the Improvement and Development Agency and the Home Office. It offers advice and ideas to help local authority communications officers to work with elected members, key spokespeople and the media on community cohesion. It advocates a symbiotic relationship between the media and local authorities to help to achieve a better and wider understanding of the similarities between people and appreciation of the differences which help to make up a community. It argues that by fostering greater acceptance there is less likely to be a breakdown in tolerance and more understanding between communities. The guide includes sections on promoting positive examples in the media, tackling negative media coverage and the law relating to community cohesion.Published by the IDeA and the Home Office.

Read more on COMMUNITY COHESION: BUILDING A RELATIONSHIP WITH THE MEDIA…

An Oldham council member has been named as the Local Government Information Unit’s “top tip councillor”. The think tank gave the title to Jeremy Sutcliffe after his advice for new councillors was judged to be the best of all those included in the LGIU’s recently published fact sheet, “Now you’re a councillor, what you should know!”Councillor Sutcliffe’s tips for newly elected members are not to promise what they can’t deliver, to put every query on behalf of constituents to an officer in writing with a copy to the constituent, who should also get a copy of the reply. Other advice includes not being afraid to ask the obvious question as more experienced members are often too inhibited to show their lack of knowledge and finally not to take sides in a neighbourhood dispute.

Read more on OLDHAM COUNCILLOR’S TIP-TOP ADVICE…

People diagnosed with terminal cancer are missing out on more than a hundred million pounds in unclaimed disability benefits according to a report today from leading care charity Macmillan Cancer Relief. It is concerned that thousands of cancer patients are not taking up benefits to which they are entitled through lack of information, confusion or embarrassment, leaving 126.5 million pounds unclaimed.The charity’s research shows that more than half of the 154,000 people who die each year from cancer do not claim disability benefits. The study also found there was a big variation in take-up across the United Kingdom with Scotland having the lowest claim rate overall. Almost two-thirds of eligible Scots do not claim. Someone living with cancer in Northern Ireland is more than twice as likely to claim as someone living with cancer in Scotland.

Read more on CANCER PATIENTS MISS OUT ON MILLIONS IN UNCLAIMED BENEFITS…