The theme for this year’s Race Equality Week is #ListenActChange. At Pause, we are committed to becoming an anti-racist organisation and, over the past three years, have focused a lot of time and effort to make change. We recognise that this work will never be ‘completed’ and that there is still a lot of work to be done, but here are some of the things that have been happening across the Pause network:
Listen
- We have a monthly anti-racism meeting for members, for our practice and national teams to get together and share details of their anti-racism journey, ask advice, provide support and learn together.
- We have improved our data collection on race and identity, by updating our Getting to Know You form that women complete when joining the Pause Programme.
- We are taking steps to learn more about how race and racism impact the women we work with, by including experiences of racism in our quarterly reporting cycle.
Act
- We’ve incorporated mandatory anti-racism training in our induction sessions for new staff members.
- We are in the process of creating a resource to support Pause Practices who are working with women who use racist language or hold racist views.
- Anti-racism is part of our organisational strategy, our framework and partnership agreement. We are open that this is an important element of our work on our website, in our policies and in our recruitment.
Change
- We have created a range of routes for people to report racism and these routes are gradually being used.
- Pause People report feeling more confident and comfortable having conversations about race, and proud to work in an environment where safe discussions about race are encouraged.
- We are pleased that 85% of Pause Practices have become engaged in our anti-racism work, but we are striving for that to be 100%.
