Jillette Brown/ John Walsh/ Kulvant Sandhu
BAME Speaking Up Champion/ Freedom To Speak Up Guardian/ Chair of the BAME Staff Network
Leeds Community Healthcare NHS Trust
In its section on belonging and inclusivity, the NHS People Plan for 2020/21 calls on trusts to build confidence in staff to speak up and ensure that staff networks are able to contribute to and inform decision-making processes. Black, Asian and minority ethnic staff networks, in particular, have added tremendous value up and down the country in 2020 to trusts’ efforts to address racism and racial inequalities in the NHS. Work undertaken within Leeds Community Healthcare Trust in recent years shows the power of giving greater voice to staff alongside the impact of motivated, well organised networks supported by interested and committed leaders.
"Where there is a key, there is yet hope." - Catherynne M. Valente, American fiction writer
Leeds Community Healthcare NHS Trust (LCH) is a community health provider in Leeds with 3,000 staff and 56 services. We have seen some very positive shifts in culture and approach in the last few years. This is reflected in staff survey results getting better year by year, the trust being number 14 in the Inclusive Employers of the Year list 2019 and ranking joint fourth in the Freedom To Speak Up Index for 2020 around having a positive speaking up culture.
There are many keys for organisational change. Below we discuss four – relating to the work of the trust and its Black, Asian and minority staff network – which have helped to push us towards these successes.
Key #1: Growing good culture
Culture is the container for everything else. The word culture comes from a Latin word meaning 'to cultivate' - to nurture. Culture is what we all grow together. At LCH there is a strong programme of work, started five years ago, on values and behaviours - how we are with ourselves and each other. These values and behaviours are embedding across the trust and staff often quote them. This culture is the foundation and bedrock for all our work. Without it, we flounder. With it, we flourish.
Key #2: Creating a strong Black, Asian and minority ethnic staff network
The network was created three years ago and we received great help and guidance from Beverley Powell from the Yorkshire and the Humber NHS Leadership Academy. In the last three years we have worked hard to bring together and grow a vibrant community: one which has nearly tripled in size in that time, increasing from just under 40 members when it started up to over 110 today. We speak about our Black, Asian and minority ethnic staff network as becoming a community. It is a network and always will be but it is more. It is a living human community at the heart of an NHS organisation marked by care, listening and learning together. The more we bring the human into our work and systems, the more we will build spaces that staff feel and experience as safe, caring and hopeful.
The network links and works very well with our chief executive, directors and board.
Key #3: Creativity
We meet and are committed to a path of co-creation. We meet with senior colleagues and hear and look at our problems together and create the answers together. This has led to a powerful piece of work called I Can Be Me', which is both aspirational and actionable. It is all about how we create a culture where you can be you, and I can be me. There is also great work on allyship, Black Asian and minority ethnic Speaking Up champions, perception and reverse mentoring. We create this work with non Black, Asian and minority ethnic colleagues and deliver and shape it together.
Key #4: Freedom to Speak Up
We have discovered there is a potent liminal space between Freedom to Speak Up Guardian work and the Black, Asian and minority ethnic staff network. This sphere is a place where creative and new work can emerge and a newer deeper alliance between Speaking Up and Black, Asian and minority ethnic staff networks is born. This is key so that the voices and stories of Black, Asian and minority ethnic colleagues can be heard and understood by the organisation. As a result of this approach we have created 10 Black, Asian and minority ethnic Speaking Up Champions who are doing brilliant work.
Creating cultures that care and networks that connect are fundamental to the future of our services and systems. Together we can make these cultures and networks.
We know these keys work, we have seen them work with our own eyes and hearts. The keys also give us hope, hope that things can and will change.