Priority

Key achievements

Next steps

Further embed EDI into our policies, processes and communications.

This involves regularly reviewing all of our policies, processes and communications at School-Home Support to ensure they reflect our EDI values and are in line with current best practice.

• Aligned our comms calendar with key national inclusion to centre the diverse stories/lived experience of the families we support and share best practice of creative and inclusive practices that our practitioners use when supporting families.
• Introduced a new web app to increase the accessibility of our digital content for audiences with disabilities.
• Created an inclusive language guide to share the most inclusive ways for us to communicate and ensure that we, as an organisation, are consistent in the way that we write to external audiences.
• Actively encourage staff to share their gender pronouns in various settings e.g. email signature, work badge, as a tool for visibly demonstrating trans allyship both internally within the organisation and externally.

• We will continue to look into ways to improve the accessibility of our digital content as part of a wider redesign of the School-Home Support website
• We will design a staff EDI pack which brings together whole EDI offer for staff at School-Home Support in an accessible and user-friendly way
• We will look into improving how we report on our EDI work

Strengthen the diversity of our Board of Trustees.

We are actively monitoring board diversity with a specific intent to ensure we attract and recruit more applicants from a wider range of backgrounds.

• Updated our job advert template and recruitment pack to demonstrate our commitment to diversifying the board and diversified the recruitment sources we are using to target those with lived experience and/or from a BAME background
• Completed Getting on Board’s Transform Trustee recruitment  Programme
• Successfully recruited our first young trustee onto our board (an ex SHS service user) in 2022.

• Capture learnings from our first young trustee and use this to improve the experience for future trustees.
• Continue to review ways to make our board culture more accessible and inclusive
• Recruit and support at least 4 trustees who have experienced the issues faced by our service users, both young people and parents to the board of trustees by 2027

Recruit and retain a diversity of talent across all levels of the organisation.

We plan to review our recruitment and selection processes and career progression routes to allow us to increase representation at all levels of seniority.

• Redesigned our equality monitoring form used during our recruitment process to help us identify where barriers exist to diverse talent entering the organisation.
• Created a set of EDI recruitment recommendations to support our new HR team to improve our current recruitment processes, with inclusion being a central part of this.
• Made improvements to the accessibility of our central office, including the introduction of handrails in the toilets.

• Start to review equality monitoring data to identify which groups are underrepresented in our staff team and where barriers lie in the recruitment process for applicants.
• Look into the feasibility of becoming a Disability Confident employer or Includability Committed employer.
• Identify improvements to our current recruitment processes
• Identify steps we can take to increase diversity in senior leadership and middle management teams.

Ensure that we are meeting the diverse needs of our service users and that our services are accessible to all.

We will be actively monitoring who is using our services, the quality of support they are receiving and outcomes across the various communities that we work with, to ensure that we are meeting the diverse needs of our beneficiaries and that our services are accessible to everyone

• Developed key EDI metrics to help us monitor and report on outcomes for our young people by protected characteristics e.g. gender, ethnicity, SEN.
• We collect regular feedback from our service users via our end of support survey and user voice week consultation, to help us quality monitor our services and identify any potential barriers for our families in accessing our services
• Introduced a translation service for our practitioners which pairs other colleagues or corporate volunteers who speak an additional language with a practitioner to work with their ESOL families.
• Introduced a child survey to capture regular feedback from our young people on the support they have received and any improvements that can be made.

• Use data collected to identify actions for improvement and targeted support with the family intervention team 
• Develop translation survive to benefit more of our families and ensure practitioners feel confident using interpreters in their work 
• Develop a cultural catalogue of resources/activities which practitioners can use with their children in schools to help celebrate and highlight different religious festivals and cultural celebrations around the year.

Increase and improve our provision of learning, development and engagement opportunities for staff to maximise EDI good practice.

We are providing regular training and events for staff to encourage them to reflect on and consider how we can all improve our working practices through a greater awareness of and commitment to EDI best practice. We are also consulting with all staff on a regular basis to understand what improvements we can make in regards to inclusion at School-Home Support.

• All new starters are now required to take part in mandatory EDI training 
• EDI training is embedded into our annual training programme, with staff feedback determining areas of focus. 
• Introduced half-termly staff led EDI assemblies, an opportunity for staff to come together and discuss important diversity and inclusion issues. 
• Signed up to Stonewall’s Diversity Champion programme to help us embed LGBTQ+ inclusion across the organisation 
• Confidential process via an EDI champion for staff to raise EDI concerns or issues, as a way to hear from voices that may be concerned about repercussions of raising EDI issues 
• Introduced a menopause champion role to support staff members going through this transitional phase.
• Comprehensive cultural competence training completed with 46 staff members to help us identify how we can further improve our organisational culture

• Continue to develop our EDI assemblies and encourage more staff to participate and facilitate discussions.
• Develop an action plan based on cultural competency training feedback 
• Upskill a staff member as and LGBT champion to provide expertise within the organisation on LGBT inclusion 
• Offer new EDI training opportunities for staff based on feedback from 2023 training needs analysis