We were shocked and saddened to hear about the death of George Floyd last year. After this tragedy, questions were rightly asked, about how we’re working as a society to become anti-racist and create an open and honest dialogue about equality and diversity. This made us reflect on what we’re doing as an organisation and within our profession to improve Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI).
A year on we’d like to update you on our EDI journey. A key first step was to benchmark our starting point. We used the Diversity and Inclusion Progression Framework for professional bodies, developed by the Science Council and Royal Academy of Engineering for this purpose. This has enabled us to look internally and see what we need to do differently.
There are four levels of development: Initiating, Developing, Engaging, and Evolving. We are at the Initiating level and have actions in place to take us to the next level.
Our key activities include:
Improving our leadership and governance:
- Making a successful case for action on EDI in the organisation, Council agreed additional resource, created a new post for an EDI manager and for our vision on diversity to be included in work plans.
- Actively seeking to diversify membership of RCOT Council, Boards and working groups. Following the 2021 AGM, Council will soon have two of the eight elected positions filled by members from ethnic minority backgrounds.
- Positive action such as explicitly encouraging applications from marginalised and minority groups. We reviewed recruitment processes, for example, using blind recruitment and use of a diversity platform for advertising RCOT job applications.
- Ensuring EDI is a regular agenda item on all RCOT Boards.
- Region committees encouraged to co-opt members to enhance EDI activities.
- An expert EDI representative was recruited into the RCOT Publications Group to review draft RCOT practice publications.
Learning from and working with others:
- RCOT are members of the Professional Associations Research EDI Network, the Health and Care Profession Council EDI group, and The Chief Allied Health Professions Officer EDI network.
- Secured expert EDI consultancy input for interview processes and panels.
- Secured the services of a Specialist EDI Consultancy to work with RCOT staff.
- Started learning and working with critical friends, e.g. BAMEOTUK Network, and are actively looking at how we can do this better and more consistently.
Working to influence Diversity in the profession:
- Created our #ChooseOT careers campaign with diversity and inclusion at its heart, featuring members from diverse backgrounds. See www.chooseot.co.uk.
- Small Change, Big Impact story-wall – provides an opportunity to highlight diversity within the profession.
- Experienced academic with EDI expertise invited as co-opted member of the RCOT Learning & Development Board.
- RCOT Learning & Development Standards include EDI requirements in relation to admissions and programme delivery.
- Reviewed our ethnicity monitoring for our new customer relationship management system so that we can accurately capture EDI data from our members.
- RCOT will be providing leadership mentoring to three successful candidates for the Allied Health Professions Federation (AHPF) BAME Leadership programme.
Raising the profile of EDI within the profession:
- Created a dedicated Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) section on our website and through it we have shared resources and actively sought contributions from members.
- Professional Standards for Occupational Therapy Practice, Conduct and Ethics (2021) and the RCOT Career Development Framework, second edition, both underwent specific EDI consultations, resulting in enhanced editions to impact on members equality conduct, behaviours and careers. This ensures that the content appropriately addresses matters related to EDI throughout.
- EDI is one of the themes for our Annual Conference 2021. The event will include an expert panel of speakers on 'how to make practice more our inclusive', a keynote session on the 7 A’s of Allyship, and papers will be presented on themes such as decolonisation of the curriculum.
- A series of virtual events for members are planned with confirmed speakers such as Yvonne Coghill, Senior Programme Lead at the Leadership Academy, Wayne Reid Professional Officer at the British Association of Social Workers and Musharrat Ahmed-Landeryou, Senior Lecturer at London South Bank University. Details will be announced once dates and details are finalised.
- Produced a ‘Let’s talk about race’ edition of OTnews including four feature articles from BAME occupational therapists. We are also encouraging diversity in the authorship of OTnews articles.
- Promotion on our website and in OTnews of our partner UNISON’s campaign aimed at tackling the racism that members face, ‘Race for Equality’ and UNISON’s Black members’ group campaigning for equality in the workplace.
- Promoted the World Federation of Occupational Therapists’s statement on systemic racism.
- Improved the diverse range of representation within our communications.
- Reviewed our planning calendar to accommodate significant events and awareness days.
- Supporting our Regional Groups and Specialist Sections to address EDI, for example, through inviting BAME co-optees to committees, running BAME-related online discussion events
- The robust process of EDI monitoring and unconscious bias training was recognised as an example of good practice in the subsequent review by the Research Excellence Framework (REF) organising committee for RCOT nominations for REF2021 sub-panel membership.
This has been a good start, but it is just that, a start, we have much to learn on our journey. We are still recruiting for the EDI manager post and still need to have better communication with our experts in the profession, but we are hopeful of the prospect of learning and developing in partnership with our members.
Finally, while the points made outline our progress so far, we acknowledge that commitment to anti-racism and anti-discrimination is an ongoing process. We are committed to continuously enhancing our understanding, educating ourselves and adapting our services where necessary to better serve our community and members.
We continue to welcome your feedback and ideas, please email hello@rcot.co.uk with your thoughts. Thank you.