The ImROC vision for Equity and Inclusion is:
To pioneer new and innovative approaches to mental health and wellbeing that redress systemic inequities, and foster agency within traditionally marginalised communities
The ImROC Equity and Inclusion 5 Aims are:
1. To grow ImROC’s understanding and awareness of how issues of inequity and inclusion interplay with issues affecting mental health and wellbeing
Steps to achieve:
- To form a dedicated equity and inclusion team of consultants who can work to lead and guide this initiative
- See ‘online library’ goals
- To support the growth of ImROC consultants so that they practice and promote the equity and inclusion agenda at every level. This includes, but is not limited to:
- Access to pertinent resources
- Creating reflective spaces to discuss and participate within the equity and inclusion agenda, and to help foster the needed personal and professional growth of the team
- Encouraging a culture of care and accountability
- Providing consultants with high-quality training on equity and inclusion
- Providing consultants with access to safe and supportive spaces to discuss concerns and issues relating to equity and inclusion
- To make a dedicated effort to analyse, evaluate, and redress the systemic and historic legacies that affect mental health and wellbeing organisations, ImROC included
2. To uphold a culture of compassion within ImROC that allows anyone from any background to feel safe, supported, and able to excel
Steps to achieve:
- To support consultants to actively identify and understand what their culture is and how it shapes them
- To develop our understanding of inequitable cultural legacies that ImROC may uphold so that these can be redressed
- To provide supportive and educational spaces for individuals to reflect upon their role in upholding unsafe and inequitable cultural practices
- To provide supportive environments for individuals to reflect and restore, with the understanding that equity and inclusion work can disproportionately impact the workforce
- To coproduce an understanding of what a culture of safety looks like for ImROC, and how each consultant can work to develop and uphold this
- To work in a way that maintains a culture of psychological and emotional safety
3. To strive to work in the most inclusive and conscientious way possible, recognising that equity and inclusion plays a role in all of ImROC’s affairs.
Steps to achieve:
- To support the growth of ImROC consultants so that they practice and promote the equity and inclusion agenda at every level. This includes, but is not limited to:
- Access to pertinent resources
- Creating reflective spaces to discuss and participate within the equity and inclusion agenda, and to help foster the needed personal and professional growth of the team
- Encouraging a culture of care and accountability
- Providing consultants with high-quality training on equity and inclusion
- Providing consultants with access to safe and supportive spaces to discuss concerns and issues relating to equity and inclusion
- For ImROC leaders to role model an approach that prioritises genuine consultant involvement and team wellbeing
- To build, manage, and review an accessible complaints and feedback procedure, ensuring that this is continually and appropriately developed
- To recognise that equity and inclusion is a process of continual learning and development, and to strive towards a working approach that upholds this agenda to a high standard
4. To participate in and contribute to the larger discourse surrounding equity and inclusion through connecting with other leaders in the field and by developing ImROC’s own content and resources
Steps to achieve:
- See ‘online library’ goals
- To support the growth of ImROC consultants so that they practice and promote the equity and inclusion agenda at every level. This includes, but is not limited to:
- Access to pertinent resources
- Creating reflective spaces to discuss and participate within the equity and inclusion agenda, and to help foster the needed personal and professional growth of the team
- Encouraging a culture of care and accountability
- Providing consultants with high-quality training on equity and inclusion
- Providing consultants with access to safe and supportive spaces to discuss concerns and issues relating to equity and inclusion
- See ‘social media’ goals
- To represent ImROC at key events on equity and inclusion
5. To use ImROC’s influence to promote beneficial ideas and initiatives, and to challenge misinformation and issues, in the field of equitable and inclusive approaches to mental health and wellbeing
Steps to achieve:
- To support the growth of ImROC consultants so that they practice and promote the equity and inclusion agenda at every level. This includes, but is not limited to:
- Access to pertinent resources
- Creating reflective spaces to discuss and participate within the equity and inclusion agenda, and to help foster the needed personal and professional growth of the team
- Encouraging a culture of care and accountability
- Providing consultants with high-quality training on equity and inclusion
- Providing consultants with access to safe and supportive spaces to discuss concerns and issues relating to equity and inclusion
- See ‘online library’ goals
- See ‘social media’ goals
ImROC Equity and Inclusion and the Use of Language
For the vision statement and accompanying aims ImROC has chosen to use the key terminology of ‘equity’ and ‘inclusion’.
‘Equity‘ has been chosen as opposed to a term such as ‘equality’ as it refers to the balancing of historic and systemic legacies that continue to influence the day-to-day. These issues go deeper than the interpersonal and so they cannot be resolved through attempting to balance the scales and to provide the same opportunities for everybody (as would be suggested by the term ‘equality’). Equity recognises that everyone comes from a different background and starting point in life with varying privilege, challenges, and support needs. As such, the responsive action taken to redress these inequities needs to be tailored and unique to each individual situation, and many initiatives must go beyond supporting the individual and instead target the unquestioned norms and practices upheld by the dominant culture and institutions.
‘Inclusion‘, in the context of the field of equity and inclusion, is frequently used to refer to the idea of welcoming those to the table who have been marginalised and previously excluded. In this sense, it looks beyond the surface level differences in culture and characteristics that individuals may share/not share, and considers how welcome people are to bring their authentic selves into a space. However, we need to be aware that inclusion can be a problematic term at times. This is because, by definition, it means, ‘to contain…or to make something part of something else’. By extending this definition to equity, diversity, and inclusion work, it can present a trap that marginalised groups are being permitted into spaces from which they were traditionally excluded, but on the terms and conditions of the dominant group.
The reason this term has been chosen is because in the UK, where ImROC was founded and predominantly functions, ‘inclusion’ is widely used and understood (at time of writing) in its meaning. Equity and inclusion work needs to be accessible or else it is self-defeating and serves only to reinforce the same traditional power hierarchies that have disproportionately benefitted the elite few. As such, when this word is used within ImROC’s aims and goals, it is used with the caveat that ‘inclusion’ cannot contingent upon one individual’s/group’s terms and conditions. Inclusion must refer to the work to welcome and foster agency in groups which have been traditionally marginalised. It should mean to collaborate and meet halfway, and should demonstrate a mutual and reciprocal commitment to the cause whereby both groups respect and learn from their shared differences.
