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Making CARA more diverse and inclusive and our commitment to anti-racism

CARA's commitment to diversity, inclusion and anti-racism

 

CARA seeks to be an inclusive organisation that actively encourages, supports and values diversity amongst both our service-users and our workers.   We wish to create a culture in which discrimination, in all its forms, is recognised and addressed.   

CARA aims to:

  • Open up as a service-provider and as an employer to people from diverse backgrounds, creating conditions where they want to enter, stay and to thrive, where they feel their needs are responded to and they are uniquely valued.
  • Identify and actively address under-representations in the diversity of our service-users and workers.
  • Recognise and understand intersectionality, that everyone has their own unique experiences of discrimination and we must consider everything and anything that can marginalise people. 
  • Reorientate our work to address discrimination in all its forms.

We have developed an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan, which outlines our ongoing commitment to examining our practice and developing as an organisation.   This is an evolving document, which will change as we learn.  You can see our Action Plan here.

 

CARA is committed to anti-racism.  We have a written Anti-racism Policy, which summarises this commitment and the actions we plan to take to identify and address racial inequality and racism within CARA.  Through this work, we will be aiming to dismantle barriers within CARA to ensure we do not continue to perpetuate institutional racism and can create a truly inclusive environment for our service-users and our workers. 

 

Some of the actions we have taken over the last year to become a more diverse, inclusive and anti-racist organisation are:

  • Providing Unconscious Bias and Anti-Racism training for all CARA workers.
  • Providing training for all CARA workers in LGBTQ+ Awareness to ensure CARA is an LGBTQ+ safe space.
  • Providing Disability Awareness training for all CARA workers.
  • Providing a range of resources, including books, articles and videos around diversity, inclusion and anti-racism for CARA workers to use.
  • Carrying out annual monitoring of our data to identify whether people from particular backgrounds are under-represented amongst our service-users and our workers.
  • Building links with community groups to help us reach people who may not know about our services, or who may feel excluded from the support we offer.
  • Reviewing the way our services run to make them as accessible and inclusive as possible.
  • Signing up to the VAWG Sector Anti-racism Charter and using the charter as a framework to begin a process of reflection, learning and change to increase our ability to develop lasting anti-racist practice.

 

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Feedback on diversity and inclusion at CARA

f you have feedback on diversity and inclusion at CARA, please get in touch.  You can contact us on info@caraessex.org.uk or by calling our office line on 01206 357881.

If you experienced barriers to accessing CARA's services or think we should provide our services in a different way to meet your needs, please let us know.  You can contact us on info@caraessex.org.uk or by calling our office line on 01206 357881.