St Michael’s Hospice aspires to be a place where everyone feels welcome; whether you are cared for or supported by us, employed by us, volunteer for us, or support us in any way. We recognise that being a diverse and inclusive organisation is enabling us to achieve our vision of a kind, resilient and empowered community who are ready, willing, capable and confident to support people living with dying, death and loss.

People should have equitable access to our services and to be treated with kindness and respect. We continue our established work with patients, families and bereaved people to truly understand their individual needs and strive to meet them. Whilst we have made significant progress in this area in recent years, we know there is more work to do to connect with our wider community and to engage with people who feel that the Hospice cannot meet their needs.

We are gathering information such as age, gender identity, ethnic background, sexual orientation, religion/belief and disability as well as information on people who may experience multiple forms of discrimination at the same time. This is enabling us to assess equality and diversity across the organisation, to understand where the gaps are within our service and inform our priorities for action.

We want to recruit and retain the most diversely talented people and have a workforce representative of our community. We are committed to an inclusive and safe workplace, free of bullying and discrimination. To support us in this, we provide training and a range of learning opportunities, for employees and volunteers, on what an inclusive organisation looks and feels like. Our ‘ethos/culture continues to support and develop psychological safety for colleagues to share lived experiences, without fear of judgment or adverse treatment. This is enabling the entire organisation to grow.

To ensure the goals of this statement become actions, we have established two groups made up of employees from various teams across the Hospice: the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Steering Group and Diversity and inclusion Group. We encourage feedback from patients, employees and volunteers and are committed to working alongside representatives from marginalised groups, to make sure we are embedding inclusion into everyday Hospice policies and procedures, so equality and diversity is at the very heart of Hospice community.

Published July 2024.