Race And Inequality – Our Policy, Our Goals And Our Actions
What is our position?
We absolutely condemn and challenge racism in all its forms. It is not enough to simply say Black Lives Matter but it is important that we take action to do what we can to put right the historical, institutional, social and personal atrocities and injustices faced by Black people now and in the past.
Our genuine diversity at Hillside Clubhouse plays a major part in our strength and success but we are committed as an organisation to do more. We will challenge racism in all its forms wherever it occurs in our work and ensure that diversity continues to be central to all that we do.
What are we doing right now to back up words with actions?
We are conducting an internal review which is considering the following questions:
- How we can further address and challenge inequality and justice
- How we can influence others to do the same
- How we can further support diversity and equality in the workplace and our services
- How we can make our services more responsive and equal
- How we can support our staff and members affected by inequality or injustice better
- What we can do as individuals, as groups, as a Clubhouse community to tackle equality and justice
Staff, members and clients are being asked to input into the review which is currently underway.
What are we going to do next?
The review is ongoing but already there are a number of actions that we are starting on. This action plan will develop and grow further as the review progresses. Actions we are taking so far include:
- Setting up a group of Champions (of staff, members and clients) to support taking forward review outcomes and actions
- Unconscious Bias training to be organised and rolled out for all staff and to be included as part of mandatory induction training
- Working on a clear supportive positioning statement aligned to the aims and sentiments of Black Lives Matter but going further than a simple statement to demonstrate our commitment and actions and linking to a new section of our website.
- To consider the language we use (BAME is not a popular term)
- To review vocational profiles for our IPS services and address matters of race and diversity
- Race and inequality will be a standing item on Board meeting and team meeting agendas
- Encouraging openness and space for our colleagues to feel safe and share their personal experiences.
- To address referral flows that are not reflective of demography with the NHS and other referrers
- Specifically monitor numbers of Black people going into work on our employment services and by referral stream and job type and address any inequality
- To proactively approach Black owned businesses in terms of employer engagement
- Actively contribute to the Health Inequalities Workstream of the Islington All Age Mental Health Board to influence statutory sector and other providers
- To influence the local Trust to develop its workforce so that its workforce and senior management are ethnically diverse
- Actively contribute to the Camden Resilience Network on race and inequality matters.
- Review our recruitment policies and practice
- To consider how we can develop KPIs around race and inequality
- To strive to ensure that our own management team and workforce remain ethnically diverse
- To ensure that we effectively respond to dietary needs (including halal)
- Diversity, ethnicity and inequality to be part of core staff induction and to look at investing in an in house training programme for members including policies and expectations.
- An ongoing commitment to proactively challenge any inappropriate language or behaviour
- An ongoing commitment to working more closely with culturally diverse community organisations and reviewing agencies we work with to ensure they are representative of Black people
- A commitment to celebrating difference and openly and proactively promote opportunities for this.
- Sharing our position with partner organisations and referral organisations and ask what their own positions are to aid benchmarking
- Regularly reviewing our progress against actions in this plan.
These initial actions are only a start.
Staff, member and client perspectives
We are asking our Black members and staff to give some personal testimonials about their experience of Hillside’s approach to inclusion and will be sharing these perspectives soon on the website.
How are we doing?
Our central point is that we can never do enough to ensure that injustices are put right.
Central to this is for us to learn what we, as an organisation and as individuals, can do to make things better. We don’t hold all the answers or solutions or claim to do so but we want to be part of those solutions.
Our makeup
We understand that statistics do not always tell the full story and can be used in different ways to make organisations look better. We also acknowledge that Black Lives Matter and Diversity must be seen in separate contexts.
However, our makeup is important and it is something that we are proud of. We believe it gives us some strong foundations to build upon and is what makes our organisation the vibrant and successful one it is.
- People from BAME communities make up 40% of our current workforce and this percentage is reflected at the same level in the makeup of the Senior Management Team
- People from BAME communities make up 33% of our current Board
- Last year – across our services 39% of our members were people from BAME communities
- 11% or our staff identify as being from LGBTQI communities as do 6% of our members
- 57% of our workforce is female 49% of our members are female
