Including Everyone
Foreword
There is enormous strength in diversity. Bringing people together from across a wide range of social and cultural experiences and backgrounds enables us to broaden our perspectives, enhance our understanding and enrich our way of life. It fosters an inclusive and supportive environment, which lends strength and vitality to communities and this enables individuals to meet their potential.
In 2020 we introduced our Including Everyone Framework which outlines our approach to equalities, diversity and inclusion and sets out our vision to be leaders in our field; providing inclusive services, workplaces and communities, equitable access to services and equality of opportunity.
We have heard how painful exclusion can be for people and how negatively this can impact people’s lives. We take our obligations and commitments to equalities, diversity and inclusion extremely seriously. We recognise the need to listen and learn as we tackle inequalities through our policies but most importantly through our concrete actions.
We are working hard to ensure our workplaces, services and communities are inclusive, so they are places where diversity is protected, honoured and celebrated. We know we don’t have all the answers, but we keep listening to and learning from our staff and residents, so we can identify inequality and tackle disadvantage, recognising the need to redouble efforts to tackle racism and all forms of discrimination.
We keep developing this framework because to be able to have further understanding of what is important to our residents and members of staff and we will keep working to achieve those goals. How this is expressed for our communities, services and staff will differ according to their unique circumstances, and this will be reflected in an action plan for the organisation which will sit underneath this framework. These plans describe the local actions we will take to deliver on the goals and commitments outlined in this document; they are reviewed and updated annually, and are used to track and measure our progress.
Cllr Barry Wood, Leader of Cherwell District Council