Becoming anti-racist
We want to make sure that we are reaching all disabled people and people with mental health conditions, including people and communities of colour in our county.
We love working in and for this county, but we must work for all of it. To fully deliver our mission, our work needs to be shaped by people from all communities. Barnwood Trust needs to be an anti-racist organisation – a safer place for people of colour. To do this we need to improve both our relationships and our practices.
Our Chief Executive Officer Sally Byng has written an anti-racism statement here. This explains the work we are doing to become an anti-racist organisation, and why. Below is a summary.
Changing our relationships
As an organisation, we need to examine and own our individual biases and prejudices. We have begun a long-term organisational development programme to improve our self-awareness and ability to become anti-racist.
We understand that anti-racism is not just about ‘increasing diversity’ it is about access, opportunity, and attitude. We need to increase opportunities and improve ways for people of colour to work alongside us and to be involved in all our activities.
Changing how we work
Barnwood holds resources – money, capacity, knowledge, and connections. We need expertise to direct those resources towards racial justice for disabled people of colour and people of colour with mental health conditions.
We are creating a new, dedicated role for a person of colour to join our staff team to influence what we do next. We are recruiting new members of the Board of Trustees, which has overall responsibility for what the Trust does. We are also growing a membership scheme for people to influence our work and get involved in projects with us.
We need to take an anti-racist approach to our investment portfolio too.
Read more in Sally Byng’s full anti-racism statement here
Accessible versions:
For our Easy Read version, click here.
Useful resources
We have compiled a collection of weblinks to local and national research data about the link between racial inequality and physical and mental health inequalities. If you are interested to read more, click here to find a list of useful resources.
Get in touch
We would like to hear directly from people of colour in Gloucestershire about what we need to do to be an anti-racist organisation. We are committed to improving our work and we know that this will be better if we listen to and collaborate with people of colour.
What are your expectations of us? What changes do you want to see now and in the future? Get in touch with our CEO, Sally Byng for a conversation. You can contact her on sally.byng@barnwoodtrust.org or by phone 01242 539935