Our journey to becoming anti-racist

Anti-racist statement

LSCFT are committed to becoming truly anti-racist and taking a strategic approach to challenging systemic racism within our organisation. Racism unfortunately has formed elements of the societal norms that we all function within today. People who have experienced racism have often been placed in positions which require them to work harder for the basic aspects of life which lead to fulfilment.

The organisation recognises the facts that show us that people from within B.A.M.E communities have poorer health outcomes, different access to services which are labelled for use for all, increased disparities that can lead to death, fewer opportunities to employment or development that are aligned to a specific quality of life and increased disparities with the workforce. As a trust we know that the inequalities that people from a B.A.M.E background face, lead to barriers which prevent the basic needs of humanity. We understand the importance of history and the acts of time which created the foundations in which racism was ingrained and the importance of this knowledge to move us into a space of being intentionally anti-racist. There is also power in the celebration of the contributions that B.A.M.E communities, colleagues and people have made to the world, our communities and organisation.

Our anti-racism commitment

LSCFT make a commitment to:

1. Implement zero tolerance to racism across our organisation.
2. Develop a culture of safety which creates a space for people to belong.
3. Clear and robust processes for raising and investigating concerns which allow for curiosity and understanding of detriment.
4. Continue to use data to understand the experiences of our colleagues based on different ethnicity groups and build accountability across the organisation.
5. Building colleague knowledge to understand the foundations of racism, the impact on individuals and communities and the difference between not being racist and being anti-racist.
6. Development of our leaders with a clear understanding that to be a leader within LSCFT you must be on your own journey of allyship.
7. Invest in and create opportunities for our colleagues, communities and service users to celebrate diversity and the contributions of different ethnic origins.
8. Achieve gold status within the BAME Assembly Anti-racism Framework as stated within our organisational strategy.

Where we are with our commitments (2024-25)

Implement zero tolerance to racism across our organisation

We have clear branding for our zero tolerance campaign in the Trust and continued focus on this agenda. Zero tolerance and the accompanying work is a standing agenda item on our Workforce Transformation Group, Inclusion Council and people and organisation development senior leadership meeting. This focus ensures momentum and accountability.

Zero tolerance is embedded within our HR and speaking up processes and policies. With a clear understanding that any cases that are aligned to race must include the Diversity and Inclusion Team. This multi-disciplinary approach ensures curiosity, exploration of detriment and understanding of the wider context. Our Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES) data this year supports that the process has been a success in light of the influx of investigations aligned to the recent civil unrest.

Recognising that we can only be successful on this journey if people embody the cause, we have ensured that zero tolerance behaviours are now embedded within our appraisal process and our overarching trust values and behaviours. We have also expanded this to new job descriptions, and it is clearly stipulated across all bandings the responsibilities of the individual regarding zero tolerance and anti-racist practice.

Our zero tolerance principles:

• We will listen to and support staff who report experiences of bullying, harassment or discrimination.
• We will create safety for you by addressing individual concerns.
• We will follow up and take appropriate action in policy against those acting outside of our expected values.

Next steps for zero tolerance

• Response to harm from service users or members of the public towards colleagues: the percentages of our colleagues that experience racist (discrimination overall) abuse whilst on duty is not acceptable. We know that there is no illness of which racist behaviours are a symptom and we are aware that abuse can be normalised in trusts that provide mental health services. The accountability piece for this is our clinical leaders embedding the zero tolerance principles into clinical policy and processes. This work includes the design of a process that states how we respond to harm from service users ensuring that we understand the impact on our colleagues whilst upholding our standard of outstanding care.
• Educating our colleagues: it is important that we provide our colleagues with the tools to practice zero tolerance and anti-racism behaviours. These have now been embedded with our leadership offer and standalone diversity and inclusion sessions. However, development in 2025/26 includes working with the feedback that we have received from our staff survey, inclusion events and staff networks to recognise the gaps identified by our colleagues. To then developed more resources to further embed zero tolerance and increase the level of understanding.
• Revamped communications campaign: the communications in 2023/24 were a success and we now have clear branding that when seen around the trust provides immediate recognition of the message. However, there is understanding that the principles underneath the message are not as clearly communicated and this can cause expectations which cannot always be met. This year we are going to revamp this campaign with better guidance and resources to provide clarity of what zero tolerance means at LSCFT.

Develop a culture of safety which creates a space for people to belong

This commitment is wider than just zero tolerance, it is about building accountability and understanding. A large part of building safety is about how we create psychological safety. Our chief executive has created spaces for active listening for colleagues, spaces that say to our workforce that we want to hear your truth and we know that we need to accept our part that we may play to challenge it. We have added into our governance cycle the spaces for listening by converting two Inclusion Council meetings per year to listening spaces. These are increased if there is a need to respond to a local, national or social incident.

Clear and robust processes for raising and investigating concerns which allow for curiosity and understanding of detriment

Since 2024 diversity and inclusion, zero tolerance and inclusive practice have been fully threaded through our HR aligned and speaking up policies and processes. As specified within policy, any cases aligned to race, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability will be explored with a specific diversity and inclusion lens from the beginning of the process with HR. This is to ensure that we remain curious across all cases and by curious we mean:

The impact

• What was the cultural impact?
• How does this align to the persons experiences?
• Does the persons actions or response align to the impact of the above?

The cause

• Ask the question why and ask it again. Does this experience or event differ from others?
• Seek the detriment.
• Don’t disguise discrimination or prejudice with terms such as “bad management”, however, recognise that it could be both.

The line of enquiry

• Does the proposed line of enquiry support the best opportunity to understand the facts, the impact, the mitigation and the development need?
• Do the key individuals in the process have the awareness, understanding and the empathy required?
• Have the relevant subject matter experts been involved?

The outcome

• Does the outcome consider all the above?

This year we have seen a fantastic improvement in our WRES data and part of this change is aligned to this work. This change is especially significant when we think of the increased incidents we had aligned to the recent civil unrest.

Continue to use data to understand the experiences of our colleagues based on different ethnicity groups and build accountability across the organisation

We have a comprehensive set of data within LSCFT that tells the story of the experiences of our workforce community. We have reported on sexual orientation, gender identity (national data set), disability, race (including bank and medical workforce) and gender in relation to pay for the past three years. Last year we added into these reports the lens of race across all metrics including the breakdown of ethnicities, for example we could talk about the experiences of our African, Disabled community. This year we have gone a step further to also include, where we can, the breakdown of disabilities and an ethnicity pay gap. All this data creates a clear picture of what happens within the trust.

Part of our data journey includes building accountability; we can only make change if we all do our part. As part of our reporting journey, we now hold drop-in sessions for all our colleagues to understand the data and share experiences that may help us form the narrative. The Diversity and Inclusion Team have also made specific local data sets for the various locality networks so that they can understand what the experiences are in their specific areas. These are presented within their own governance spaces.

Building colleague knowledge to understand the foundations of racism, the impact on individuals and communities and the difference between not being racist and being anti-racist

Building colleague understanding of racism, the foundations, the complexity and the societal impact are important to support the building of empathy. At LSCFT we have been providing a journey of allyship across the organisation for a few years now and we have approximately 10% of colleagues who have completed the first stages of the journey. Allyship is now also aligned to our leadership pathway to ensure that at all levels of the trust when we are talking about expected behaviours and priorities, we are consistently talking about allyship. Within allyship there is also the delivery of a tool that we designed to support the assessment of any process or policy to ensure that we are looking at it with an anti-racist lens.

As an organisation it is our responsibility to ensure that we provide the spaces to support our colleagues on their journey of development and allyship. Zero tolerance is not about an iron fist. It is about being clear of what is expected and ensuring that we support our colleagues to achieve this. A key element of this development is around spaces for understanding, challenge and what’s next. Allyship is designed to support this journey, starting with an introduction to understand the term allyship, the responsibility of the word and start the process to remove apathy, then moving into development of privilege and emotional intelligence. An additional development to the allyship journey is the use of the liberating structures model to facilitate conversations to support people into the stages of so what and how to implement their development.

Development of our leaders with a clear understanding that to be a leader within LSCFT you must be on your own journey of allyship

LSCFT leaders must be on their own journey of allyship for us to meet the task of becoming an anti-racist organisation. Allyship development has been delivered to leadership across the various localities of the Trust and development was completed with our board in 2024. This year we will continue this journey with our board and locality leaders in connection to mutual mentoring and how we ensure that our leaders are leading with an anti-racist lens.

Invest in and create opportunities for our colleagues, communities and service users to celebrate diversity and the contributions of different ethnic origins

Celebration of diversity and culture brings communities together, highlights the positivity in difference and shares values. Here at LSCFT we celebrate as a community. We support services to bring service users and colleagues together in celebration. Our occupational therapist teams create themed events with service users aligned to our inclusion calendar. Our Communications Team, work in collaboration with the Diversity and Inclusion Team ensuring messages across the Trust are inclusive and we bring everyone in on celebrations.