How becoming a truly inclusive organisation is a continuous process

As part of Black History Month, our EDI team has written this blog about how we’re continuously adapting our support to ensure we are racially and culturally sensitive, and explaining why it’s vital that the children and families we support, as well as our staff and volunteers, feel represented across CHAS.

Over the last few years the issue of race has been at the forefront of everyone’s mind. With the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, more public awareness about race equality, and an increase in wider understanding of the barriers that many Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic (BAME) people face, many organisations are taking a stand against racism and towards promoting diversity and inclusion. At CHAS we would like to add our voice to this chorus of solidarity.

What is antiracism?

Antiracism isn’t just about not being racist. It’s about actively seeking out and changing policies and practices that have the effect of discriminating against people on grounds of their race, even if that is not their intent. It’s about supporting racial equality. It’s about looking at where we are currently getting it wrong and making real changes so that we can get it right in the future.

Why is antiracism important to our work at CHAS?

The children and families we support are at the heart of everything we do. In every decision we make, their experience is our top priority. Our mission is to reach every family in Scotland with a child with a life-shortening condition.

The CHAS Plan 2020-2023 sets out our priorities for improving the support we provide to children and families, and the people who help us to achieve this; our staff and volunteers. Our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy takes this further by detailing the steps we are taking to become a more inclusive organisation, free from barriers and discrimination.

We know that the children and families who need our support come from a diverse range of backgrounds and include those who are BAME. In an effort to make sure we are reaching all sections of society equally, we commissioned the Children in Scotland Requiring Palliative Care (CHiSP) 3. This report states that 6.5% of children born to BAME households in Scotland require care for a life-shortening condition. It is good to see that over the course of the year, the number of BAME children we support in CHAS has increased to 7.3%.

If CHAS is to reach every child and family who needs us, it’s so important to make sure everyone feels welcome and this needs to be reflected in the service we provide. This means we must continuously adapt our support to ensure we are racially and culturally sensitive, and tailored to the individual. It’s also absolutely vital that the children and families we support feel represented in CHAS environments, and by the staff and volunteers who support them. If we want to provide the best possible support antiracism isn’t a choice, it’s a necessity.

What can we do?

We are already looking into ways to incorporate antiracism into our working practices, and we believe improvements can be made across all of our departments. This includes the way we recruit staff and volunteers, the way we support our children and families, and the way we present ourselves to the public. We also understand that sometimes people fall into a number of categories, including race, disability, and social class, and are working to improve our awareness of intersectionality and the effects of multiple disadvantage.

97% of our staff are currently White, with 1% reporting that they are South Asian and 2% ‘undeclared’. We are looking at ways to encourage a more racially diverse workforce, learning from other organisations, including adding a statement on job postings specifically stating that we welcome applications from BAME applicants and posting jobs on BAME-specific job boards.

Our Activities Team, who work directly with our children and families, reviewed their library and added lots of new books featuring different ethnicities so that children see themselves represented on pages that spark the magic of their imagination. We are also currently designing training for our Care and Support staff to ensure they continue to be empowered and confident in tailoring respite, end of life, and post-bereavement care to children and families in a way that is culturally sensitive. Our Volunteering Team wants to make sure that volunteering at CHAS is accessible and enticing to all types of people regardless of race, and that children families feel represented and understood by the people supporting them. We are making clear in the volunteering opportunities we post that we are looking for applications from BAME communities in particular, and have trialled posting opportunities in other languages including Urdu and Polish. We also offer flexible volunteering opportunities, in order to remove barriers to volunteering and appeal to as broad a range of people as possible.

Our Communications Team has been thinking about ways to project a more inclusive image of CHAS so that more people feel welcome and heard. This includes considering the language we use, ensuring a diverse range of people are included in our visual materials, and sharing a variety of stories from the families we support. In the future we want to take things further. We are planning on undertaking a cultural audit of our hospices, looking at the toys, displays and menus we provide to ensure they are representative of a broader range of people, and we want to acknowledge cultural events like Black History Month in our hospices. We also want to develop relationships with BAME communities throughout Scotland to increase awareness of CHAS and reach more families who need us from BAME backgrounds, and set up focus groups of BAME CHAS families so we can find out more about how we can better represent them and be more culturally sensitive. We are currently working with Napier University to support a PhD student to study into how hospice care can be more accessible to families from South Asian backgrounds.

These are only the first steps.

CHAS is committed to being a diverse, welcoming organisation to everyone, but we understand that we won’t always get it right. Becoming a truly inclusive organisation is a continuous process, and we have lots of learning to do and many changes to make moving forward.

To our amazing supporters, staff, volunteers, and most importantly the children and families we support, we need your input. If you have any suggestions of things you think we should be doing to demonstrate our commitment to antiracism, our mailbox is always open. You can email us on EDI@chas.org.uk with your thoughts and comments. We understand that we are not experts, but we are listening and open to learning from people who are.