Equity, Diversity & Inclusion

St Wilfrid’s Hospice is for everyone

Our vision is for all dying people and their loved ones to have access to the support and care they need.

For our vision to succeed, it is vital that we welcome, understand the needs of, and can support people with diverse backgrounds, characteristics and needs.  It is also core to our success that our employees, volunteers and supporters champion equality, embrace our spirit of inclusivity and reflect the diversity of the community we serve.

Why is Equity, Diversity and Inclusion important to St Wilfrid’s Hospice?

In addition to our responsibilities under the NHS Constitution, Care Quality Commission, Equality Act 2010 and the Human Rights Act 1998, we believe that threading Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) through all of our work on developing St Wilfrid’s as a great place to work, volunteer and receive care is essential.

We are not all the same. Embracing our differences and learning about what makes each of us, who we are is vital in ensuring we can connect meaningfully with our people, our patients and their loved ones.  

Some of us need help in different ways than others; whether it’s background, education, disability or a myriad of other life experiences – we want to have our eyes open to what each person needs and try to make the necessary changes to reasonably accommodate those needs. We want our people and our patients to have equity of opportunity and experience.  

We want everyone who has contact with us to feel like St Wilfrid’s is for them. In all our places and in the way we represent ourselves, we want our people and patients to feel included and feel comfortable being themselves.

Sounds great, what are you doing?

We have a dedicated working group, led by our Chief Executive, with members of our team from around the organisation. We have three distinct workstreams:

  1. Provide equal access to our care and support to everyone in our community.
  2. Educate and embed the value of EDI across our organisation; ​increase the diversity of our teams, foster a culture of inclusion​ and promote equality of outcomes.
  3. Ensure that data driven decision making is at the heart of how we achieve our EDI goals.

We want to balance ‘doing the right things’ with ‘doing things right’. That’s why we have a yearly EDI focus. In 23/24 it was on Learning Disabilities & Neurodiversity. You can read about our actions and impact here.

We are on a journey to develop our effectiveness in Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, and welcome comments and feedback from our supporters, patients and loved ones Comments, Compliments and Complaints page.