The Foundation stands against racism in all its forms. For a long time we have been committed to addressing the very real impact of racial discrimination and inequality on the mental health of our societies.
As an organisation, we have seen the outpouring of demands for racial justice and the deep need for more concerted action. We have been passionate about this for many years and we want to build on our experience from working with refugee and minority ethnic communities to do more to tackle discrimination and address structural racism in our organisation and beyond.
When we launched our new strategy last year 'Making Prevention Happen', we said integrity was core to our approach. We now have a window of opportunity to demonstrate that integrity in relation to racial justice. The prize of a safe, empowering and open organisation that champions racial equality and all forms of diversity that reflects the people we serve, is worth working for. This is both the right thing to do and will make us more effective in what we do. Tackling discrimination is core to our mission on prevention in mental health.
We have launched the following actions:
- To examine how we can do more to contribute to tackling racial inequality, especially in relation to mental health, through our programmes, research and policy functions
- arranging reverse mentoring relationships for senior staff to understand the experience of BAME colleagues of race and discrimination
- commissioning an Independent Review of racial diversity and discrimination at the Foundation to co-produce with staff the key questions and recommended actions to accelerate change
- to use the learning on race to address other areas of diversity and equality at the Foundation. We are also taking forward a commitment to the Disability Confident scheme
- committing to the Race at Work Charter and the ACEVO principles of leadership on diversity to drive action and accountability