Our journey so far…

As a community development organisation, LGBT Health and Wellbeing always strive to provide inclusive services and will continue to be proactive to the evolving needs of our community.

Following the tragic death of George Floyd in May 2020, like many individuals and organisations across the world we have been reflecting on the role we can play and what changes we must take in our help the fight for racial equality. Much of this is about broadening the conversation to reflect on our practices and policies.

Our board issued a statement in support of the Black Lives Movement and in it stated our aims to be explicit on our stance on anti-racism. The board recognised that this is not the individual responsibility of any one member and that collectively we must use our platform within the LGBT+ community to make structural change.

Our staff team have set up a working group that includes staff members, managers and a trustee representative.  Working together the group have discussed their remit and this is set out below.

• As a group we are all committed to making positive change happen.
• We recognise that we have an individual and collective responsibility to educate ourselves and facilitate / encourage learning within our organisation and wider community.
• We will be explicit about our stance on anti-racism by reflecting on what our current practice is within the organisation and welcoming recommendations and actions to things that need to change.
• We are aware this is not the individual responsibility of any one member of staff or volunteer.
• Collectively we will use our individual experience and learning as a platform to support and make positive change in our organisation to alleviate barriers and influence the wider systemic change that needs to happen for people of colour across Scotland.
• We will work hard to become an explicitly anti-racist organisation.

So far, we are focussing on these key actions

• Diversity Training – our board are sourcing bespoke training in order that our staff team and trustees can come together to learn, reflect and action change
• Recruitment and Selection – we will review and update our current recruitment and selection policy to ensure that we are explicit on our stance and to ensure that our systems are fair and alleviate barriers. We will review our processes for both staff and volunteer recruitment.
• Our reach – we will ensure that we annually review our reach and diversity through looking at statistical data gained from our volunteer, staff and community feedback survey.
• Working Group – the group will meet at least once every two months to ensure that we continue to agree and implement change. Work be undertaken between formal  meetings to ensure that we can progress forward.

What’s next

We recognise that the activities outlined above are very much a starting point and we know that there will be much more to do.

We will continue to commit to being proactive in standing against discrimination and will implement policies, practices, learning and actions that will support this.

We will share updates here as we progress with this work.