Race equality week – we stand united against racism

At our Trust we acknowledge the impact of racism on our staff, service users and our communities.

It’s our ambition to become an anti-racist organisation that will proactively challenge behaviours and known prejudice, work with our communities to understand impacts, and change policies that perpetuate racist ideas and actions.

Our Trust’s anti-racist statement has been prepared following engagement with our staff and insight gathered from our conversations with local communities. It has been co-produced and sets out our commitment that:

• We are an anti-racist organisation and will not tolerate any form of racism.
• We have a role in challenging racism and delivering anti-racist practice.
• We acknowledge that racism and inequality exists and there is more we need to do.
• We will listen to the voice of those with lived experience to help our understanding and actions.
• We are proud of our diverse workforce and want to actively recruit a workforce reflective of our communities.
• We will actively gather and share insight to drive out actions in reducing race disparity.

Our statement

We stand united against racism

To our staff, and the population we serve across West and South Yorkshire we stand united against racism and recognise the role we have in challenging racism and delivering anti-racist practice.

We are proud to say we are an anti-racist organisation. Our Trust values state we should meet the needs of everyone which means we acknowledge that racism and inequality exist and there is much more we need to do. We pledge to not tolerate any form of racism, and to proactively root out racism and tackle it head on .

As an organisation we take pride in our richly diverse workforce. We actively want to recruit a workforce reflective of our communities and build a culture of diverse leadership, stronger voice, advancement of opportunity and allyship.

As a public service organisation, we are also empowered by the Public Sector Equality Duty 2010 to go beyond remedying individual cases, and to additionally work as an organisation in pro-actively delivering equality for all. The Mental Health Act legislation means we need to significantly improve the way that all ethnic groups experience and receive such services in a more equal and equitable way.

As a partner in the wider public sector, we will use our influence by hearing the voice of those with lived experience as well as actively gather and share the information, literature and insight that is available alongside our own data, to drive our actions in reducing race disparity, both within our Trust, and as a partner.

We recognise that inequality can stem from a wide range of social, cultural, economic and physical circumstances and that racism is only one of several factors. Racism is an additional factor which can stop people from thriving. We know some of our staff face increased levels of racial abuse, violence and aggression by patients and service users and we have a duty of care to address this proactively.

If you would like to find out more, or would like to register an interest in getting involved as one of our community connectors, please contact the Trust’s equality and involvement team on InvolvingPeople@swyt.nhs.uk.