Caribbean men who built homes honoured, hope for sickle cell patients and other stories from Black, Asian and Arab communities you shouldn't have missed - curated by Melissa Sigodo

Protect Black women. Watch spoken word artist Desree's amazing performance from last night

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Yesterday, I attended the Southall Black Sisters 45th Year Anniversary celebration and was treated to quite a show. It’s also the reason I’m coming to you a bit later as it was a bit of a late night. If you don’t know who Southall Black Sisters are, they are a charity that provides holistic advocacy services for Black and minoritised women so that they can live free from all forms of violence and abuse.

At the event, guests got to see spoken word artist Desree perform. She was incredible and here’s a video I took of it to share with you. You can follow Desree on Instagram @dezziiee_ and follow The Source on Instagram too while you’re there @thesourcenewsletter. Help us grow.

As usual this week, we have the stories that went under the radar with some news from Congo and Sudan, a good chunk of health news focusing on sickle cell as we just had World Sickle Cell Day, and all the stories you shouldn’t have missed this week.

Without further ado, here they are.

News

Men from the Caribbean who created the UK’s first Black housing association by building 10 houses themselves have been honoured with a blue plaque. Access Self Build was established in the 1970s in response to the racism the men experienced after arriving in the UK and a lack of safe and affordable housing. Read the full story by The Voice Online.

Health

People experiencing a sickle cell crisis will now be able to bypass busy emergency departments and be taken directly to specialist clinicians. The London Ambulance Service has partnered with St George’s and Lewisham Hospital launching a new of way to care for patients with sickle cell. Read the full story.

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Ethnic minority NHS staff who were born overseas earn less than their white colleagues, a study has found. Despite having the same qualifications and experience, Asian and Black people working for the healthcare service are less likely to get higher income pay bands than their British-born white colleagues. Read the full story by Saman Javed at Hyphen Online.

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Care for sickle cell patients is lagging behind as a new study has found that there are only 0.5 specialist nurses per 100 patients for sickle cell, compared with two per 100 for cystic fibrosis. The research also found that there is 2.5 times more research funding for cystic fibrosis than for sickle cell. Read the full story by Tobi Thomas at The Guardian.

Windrush

The Source exclusive - Windrush scandal victims have accused the Home Office of “blatant racism” over ‘failing to provide’ legal advice funding for the compensation scheme, despite providing funding to the Post Office and infected blood scandal victims. ‘It can only be racism’, the victims say. Read the full story by me for The Source.

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A Windrush scandal victim’s compensation went from £300 to £170,000 after the initial offer was challenged by her lawyer. A review has found that people have received less compensation due to the lack of government funding for legal advice. Read the full story by Amelia Gentleman at The Guardian.

Legal

The man accused of murdering 14-year-old Daniel Anjorin by stabbing him with a sword on the way to school has denied reenacting the stabbing motions after he was arrested and taken to a psychiatric hospital. Marcus Monzo, 37, denies the murder and says he ‘does not remember anything.’ Read the full story by Emily Pennink at The Standard.

Policing

A police officer involved in the in the strip search of a 15-year-old Black child while on her period has told a misconduct hearing that she’d never received any training on what to do if someone being searched was menstruating. Read the full story by Kaf Okpattah at ITV News.

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Two Metropolitan Police officers and one former officer will face a gross misconduct hearing after a 90-year-old woman with dementia was handcuffed, placed in a spit hood and “red-dotted” with a Taser in Peckham, London, the police watchdog had said. The woman had been holding kitchen utensils and refused to put them down. Read the full story by Sian Elvin at The Independent.

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Police will now be made to record the ethnicity and nationality of child sexual abuse and exploitation suspects in Britain under mandatory rules following a review into grooming gangs. The review found that Asian and Pakistani men were “disproportionately represented” but the data was “not sufficient to allow any conclusions to be drawn at the national level.” Read the full story by Lizzie Dearden at The New York Times.

Crime

Muslims at the Belfast Islamic Centre were forced to evacuate after a device was thrown into the building and a window was smashed while people prayed inside. One man has been arrested. Read the full story by Abdullah Sabri at Belfast Telegraph.