Equality & Diversity
We are committed to making sure our services are accessible for all of our service users, and that everyone is given the best chance to not re-offend.
The HLNY Community Rehabilitation Company works within the legal framework of the Public Sector Equality Duty – part of the Equality Act 2010. This means the way we deliver our services must give due regard to:
• eliminating discrimination, harassment and victimisation on the basis of someone’s protected characteristics
• advancing equality for people with protected characteristics
• fostering good relations between people with protected characteristics and those who don’t share those characteristics.
Protected characteristics are:
• age
• disability
• gender reassignment
• marriage and civil partnership
• maternity and pregnancy
• race and ethnicity
• religion and belief (or no religion or belief)
• sex
• sexual orientation.
Also, Purple Futures, as part of Interserve Justice, has recently signed an ‘Inclusive Culture Pledge’ with the EW group (an organisation with a special interest in supporting organisations improve their practice around diversity). This means we are making a public commitment to improve how everyone is able to access our services in a way that is right for them.
Currently each CRC has an Equality and Diversity Strategy Group, chaired by a senior manager, to oversee how we’re doing with making our services as accessible, inclusive and relevant as possible – for everyone.
We set equality objectives each year based on what our information sources are telling us about how we are doing. If you want to see how we did last year, and what our current focus for improving things are, please click to read our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Annual Report.
Our main focus for this year involves:
• understanding and implementing best practice for our younger service users – those aged 18-24 – who are over represented in breach and reoffending
• continuing to provide specialist and informed services for women service users
• producing a best practice guide for working with Black, Asian, and minority ethnic service users
• implementing national guidance for working with transgender service users
• trialling partnerships to support veterans
• improving access to mental health services for our service users
• ensuring we have a process to analyse our policies and practices for their impact on equality and inclusion
• providing training for staff
• ensuring our data collection about diversity information is as complete as possible.
If you are a service user, or have an interest in any aspect of equality and diversity and want to be more involved in helping us do better please, consider the following:
• give us feedback on your experiences or thoughts about how we can make our services better for all people, or for particular groups of people
• share your expertise if you have information or skills that could help us
• if asked, please complete your diversity information when we ask you – it is protected by data protection, and as well as ensuring we understand your individual needs as a service user, we also need to understand the impact of what we are doing for different groups of people more generally
• if you are a current service user consider speaking to your case manager about maybe joining your local equality and diversity strategy group.