Richmond Fellowship champions diversity
After securing Investors in Diversity accreditation at the start of the year, Richmond Fellowship has now published a short booklet explaining our commitment and how we’re putting it into action.
We’ve been championing recovery and social inclusion for more than 55 years, working with people we support as equal partners in everything we do. But we want to go further to develop a culture in which equality, diversity, inclusion and fairness for all are valued.
That’s why we decided to go for Investors in Diversity, a national standard which helps organisations to manage equality, diversity and inclusion through a planned and holistic approach awarded by the National Centre for Diversity (NCD).
To secure the accreditation we brought together a working group with representatives from across our organisation including our Board, which drew up an action plan to make the improvements we need. The accreditation is conditional on us making progress with this plan.
The top five things we’re doing are:
- Working with people in a way that shows cultural awareness and enables recovery.
- Being more confident and competent at discussing diversity issues so we can actively support individuals more effectively.
- Improving access to our services by reviewing our physical environments and the ways we communicate.
- Providing more opportunities for people who’ve experienced mental health problems to work for/with us.
- Making sure we’ve a diverse workforce at all levels of our organisation, including our Board, so we better reflect the communities we serve.
We’ve created a short booklet, ‘Championing diversity’ to help explain our commitment and what we’re doing. You can also find out more about how we embrace diversity in the way we recruit people.
