I don’t think there has ever been a more important time to value each other and think about how we can go the extra mile to support colleagues. Not only has the pandemic led to so much sadness and anxiety amongst us all, it has also had a huge impact on the children and young people we care for. The needs of our patients are almost certainly going to rise sharply in the months and years ahead.
If we are going to meet these challenges – and even grow and develop as a result of them – then we need every paediatrician to feel they are treated equally, fairly and kindly. This gets to the very heart of why the work we are doing on equality diversity and inclusion (EDI) is so vital.
I am so thrilled to be sharing the publication of Phase 2 of our EDI report. When we started gearing ourselves up for this work, only last summer, I could never have imagined that we would have come this far, so quickly. This is a really important milestone in our ongoing EDI work, but we could not have achieved this without the invaluable input we have received from our Member Reference Group of more than 20 paediatricians who have actively helped us shape our ambitions. You can find out more about our EDI work in my short video.
Our EDI work is underpinned by three firm overarching commitments to bring together all the workstream reports:
We will be accountable
We will be a voice for change
We will continue to engage deeply and widely
take these commitments very seriously because I know that we cannot do justice to this very important work if we don’t push ourselves into some uncomfortable areas, recognise when things go wrong and frequently stop and reflect and listen to feedback. So, this is an important milestone in our work, but doesn’t represent the end – far from it, there are several actions and clear deliverables that the College will be taking forward between now and 2023.
We’ve also launched our new diversity monitoring form to improve our data collection – insight from our review of voluntary roles work at the College earmarked that we need to get much better at data collection so that we know where we need to improve and to help monitor our progress. Do take the opportunity to log in (via your RCPCH single sign on) and complete the form – it will make a huge difference to our work.
We’d love your feedback on our new report – please send comments to edi@rcpch.ac.uk. We’ll be talking more about our EDI work over the coming weeks and months, including another live Q&A – watch this space for details.
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