South London and Maudsley launches anti-racism vision statement
Service Users and Carers, Community Leaders, Staff, Board members and the Executive Leadership Team have worked together to launch South London and Maudsley’s first anti-racism vision statement during Black History Month.
South London and Maudsley provides mental health care to some of the most ethnically diverse and deprived communities in the UK. A significant proportion of our workforce are also from Black, Asian and Multi-Ethnic backgrounds.
The vision statement has been coproduced by service users and carers, community leaders and staff developing the Patient and Carer Race Equality Framework (PCREF). PCREF is the NHS England accountability framework to eliminate the unacceptable racial disparity in the access, experience and outcomes of Black, Asian and Multi-Ethnic communities and to significantly improve their trust and confidence in mental health services.
David Bradley, Chief Executive, said: “In our five-year strategy Aiming High; Changing Lives, we set our ambition to be known for our action on anti-racism.
“We are committed to reducing the disparities faced by people from Black, Asian and Multi-Ethnic communities, who form a significant proportion of the people using our local services.
“We recognise that fulfilling this ambition requires transformational change from within our organisation and we must embed anti-racism in all that we do to ensure better experiences for our staff, service users and people we serve. This anti-racism statement sets out how we will put this into action.”
Our anti-racism vision statement:
South London and Maudsley, as a mental health service provider, aims to apply anti-racism approaches to remove the conditions that hold systemic racism in place. These are conditions where bias and prejudice are built into systems, policies, processes, resource flows, practices, relationships and connections, power dynamics and mental models. Our strategic anti-racism plan will set out how our people, work and organisation will embody an anti-racism approach. The work of the PCREF Partnership will be central to this strategy and its implementation. Together, South London and Maudsley will:
o Ensure our organisational leadership and culture will embody anti-racism.
o Be an anti-racist employer and workplace.
o Collaborate with the mental health sector and our partners to promote, and evaluate, our anti-racist approach.
o Incorporate an anti-racism agenda into our organisational development, our training, education and research work and our innovations.
o Integrate anti-racism into our brand, media campaigns and communications.
o Nurture an environment of listening, learning and unlearning racism
o Embed anti-racism in all that we do to ensure better access, outcomes and experience for our service users, carers and the communities we serve.
The next steps are for a high level anti-racism plan covering workforce, service delivery and other organisational areas to be launched in November 2022. Detailed implementation plans will be signed off by the Board in early 2023, with progress monitored by a Task and Finish Group comprised of service users and carers, community leaders, staff, Board members and the Executive Leadership Team through the rest of 2023.
Brenda, a carer involved in PCREF, said: “As a carer, racism impacts me and the people I care for at service level. An anti-racism policy should make the commitment clear to each staff member on every level, so they know the effects their actions or inactions will have.”
