Skip to content

Equality and Diversity Statement

Celebrating diversitySt Basils is committed to creating an environment for staff, young people and partners that is free from all forms of discrimination and where diversity is embraced.  It is our intention to do our very best for each young person, ensuring that the service St Basils offers is fair, inclusive, appropriate and relevant for each individual. St Basils also wants to ensure that staff are provided with the best employment opportunities and that they are enabled to contribute effectively to the work of the organisation.

Our strategic priority ‘Challenging discrimination and promoting diversity and cohesion through employment, service delivery and community engagement’, highlights our commitment to ensuring that staff and young people are provided with a safe and secure environment in which they can thrive and develop, and where all aspects of their welfare is protected.

Anti-Racism Statement

St Basils recognise that racism goes beyond conscious or open hostility towards individuals or communities because of their culture, colour, nationality, race, or ethnic background. Racism can be covert, subtle, and unconscious. It can also be institutional and embedded within systems which affect us all.

At St Basils, we strive towards a more equal, fair and inclusive environment; an important part of this is recognising and tackling racism wherever we encounter it. We understand that to serve our community as best as possible, we must actively challenge all forms of hate and discrimination. This includes holding ourselves accountable by implementing policies and strategies that will help to close gaps and decrease any inequalities experienced by our colleagues, and also the young people we work with in the West Midlands.

Youth homelessness in the UK continues to increase. Centrepoint Databank figures in 2022-23 identified almost 136,000 young people approaching their Local Authority for assistance, representing a 5% increase compared to the previous year.  The young people who approach St Basils for assistance are disproportionately from Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities. We are working vigilantly as an organisation to eradicate all forms of racism so that we can ensure our young people receive the support they need when facing the ultimate exclusion of homelessness.

Whilst we strive for excellence in this area, we recognise we have much more to do. Although our colleagues are diverse in a multitude of ways, we understand that this is not reflected throughout all levels of the organisation. By embracing and adopting an anti-racist approach, we are consciously structuring our activities to reflect our values and actions to address any systemic barriers to race equality. This requires solidarity, bravery, and honesty in recognising that there remains much to do, and we must work collectively to listen to experiences and to tackle these inequalities at personal and systemic levels.

We know that we need to do more to tackle racism in society – wherever and whenever it occurs. We are determined to ensure that our colleagues and young people find a safe space within St Basils that does not perpetuate the racism that exists within society, institutionally or culturally through our policies, procedures and delivery of services.  We can no longer simply be not racist; at St Basils we will endeavour to be an actively and visibly anti-racist organisation that is also an ally to all GEM groups (Global Ethnic Majority).

We are currently developing our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion framework which will extend to specific Anti-Racism training, policies, and commitments. We also understand that to get it right, it will take time, investment and dedication to ensure that conversations around awareness are had continually and that both our colleagues and our young people have a safe space to discuss their experiences and concerns.

Disability confident scheme

disability confident logoThe Equality Act 2010 defines a person as having a disability if he/she has a physical or mental impairment which has a substantial and long term adverse effect on his/her ability to carry out normal day to day activities.

St Basils is committed to a policy of ensuring equality of opportunity in employment for all, and to taking action to avoid discrimination.  As users of the disability confident scheme, we guarantee to interview all disabled applicants who meet the minimum criteria for our vacancies.

Equal Opportunities policy monitoring

St Basils are Equal Opportunities employers and as part of our equal opportunities policy we are committed to implementing policies which do not discriminate on the grounds of ethnicity, gender, pregnancy and maternity, marital or civil partnership status, sexual orientation, disability, age and religion.

For this reason our recruitment and selection procedures aim to avoid any unfair discrimination on these grounds during the consideration of applications for employment. To help us monitor this policy and the effectiveness of our recruitment practices we require all applicants to complete an equal opportunities policy monitoring form as part of the application process.

As with all the other information on the application form it will be treated as confidential and the short-listing and recruiting panel will not see this part of the form.

Our Diverse Board of Directors

We are proud of our diversity at St Basils and particularly that the diversity of our staff team reflects the communities that we serve in Birmingham and beyond. We feel it is important that our Board of Directors does the same in order to bring a variety of skills and perspectives to the table. As a young people’s charity it is particularly important that as well as gender and ethnic background being brought into consideration, a range of ages is also reflected in the make-up of the board in order to ensure we continue to meet the diverse needs of young people.

Meet our Board

Gender Pay Gap Report

All UK employers over a certain size are required to report on their gender pay gap. Our report can be downloaded by clicking on the red button below. In it you’ll find a snapshot of the gender pay balance within St Basils, accompanied by notes to explain what the results mean.

One of St Basils’ strategic priorities is ‘Challenging discrimination and promoting diversity and cohesion through employment, service delivery and community engagement’ – central to which is our ongoing commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion, and to addressing workplace barriers to equality.

We welcome the requirement to report on this data and will use the information to inform our continuing commitment to ensure that everyone – regardless of race, ethnicity or gender – has an equal opportunity to thrive.

Gender Pay Gap Report 2023