School-Home Support Celebrates Pride Month
News article from June 1, 2022
At School-Home Support, we are celebrating Pride Month this June.
We recognise, however, that we must create safe and inclusive spaces for all those who work with us, interact with us, and are supported by us, all year round.
It is also essential that our team and our workplace are representative of the diverse communities we support, and that we create an inclusive culture where all our staff can thrive and reach their full potential.
So, what are we doing to ensure that School-Home Support is a safe and inclusive environment for everyone in the LGBTQ+ community?
In February 2020 we set up an EDI group to ensure that we were actively looking at ways to ensure that School-Home Support the most inclusive charity it could be.
Led by this group, we have:
- Delivered EDI training for all staff and new starters, including most recently, ‘Becoming an LGBT ally at home, at work and in the community’ delivered by the LGBT Foundation
- Continued to encourage all staff to display and use their gender pronouns in the workplace
- Created internal resources for staff to actively engage with and learn from
- Ensured inclusion is central to our recruitment practices, to increase representation at all levels and identify any barriers to diverse talent entering our organisation
- Developed our very own internal inclusive language guide setting standards for our organisational terminology. This includes LGBTQ+, SEND and Race and Ethnicity guidance
- Celebrated LGBT history month this year by hosting a talk from one of our LGBT corporate volunteers offering impactful insight and lived experience to our staff members and trustees
- Assigned an EDI champion who is available to provide safe spaces for staff to discuss concerns or challenges they are experiencing in relation to equality, diversity and inclusion.
- Set up a LGBTQ+ support form through which our staff can ask for advice and specific resources relating to their practice or internal policy, to ensure our staff are feeling confident with supporting LGBT Children & Young people
This year we also joined Stonewall’s Children and Young People’s (CYP) Champions programme making great use of their training offering. We have offered out the below training to our family practitioners:
- Supporting LGBTQ+ children and young people
- Improving LGBTQ+ young people’s mental health and wellbeing
We have also made use of Stonewalls consultation service getting expert advice on ensuring we are doing all we can to support our LGBTQ+ young people.
Interested in hearing more about our work? Sign up to our newsletter here.