“Being inclusive isn’t speaking for other people, it’s giving them the opportunity to have their voices heard. It’s important to open up the discussion to others because you are blinkered and you can only speak for yourself."

Clare Bailey, our Divisional Director of Healthcare Professionals, found she learnt many things during NHS London’s White Allyship programme. Allies are people who support and stand up for a marginalised group that they are not a member of.

“I’d never heard the term ‘white ally’ before and was fascinated by the programme,” she said. “I like to think that I’m a very inclusive person and not at all biased and I wanted to challenge my perceptions of how inclusive I actually was as a senior leader.”

Clare is one of four senior leaders at our Trust who took part in the programme, with around 30 colleagues from across the region. Jo Barrett, Interim Site Operations Director at King George Hospital, is another.

“From the first session, I could tell it was going to be a challenging programme and I was completely taken out of my comfort zone,” Jo said.

“It really made me question myself which was really challenging, but it’s made me more self-aware and able to see things from different perspectives. Now I can respond differently and lead in a more inclusive way.”

John Brecknell, Director of Medical Education and a consultant neurosurgeon, joined the programme because he’d been struggling to tackle discrimination that he was seeing towards medical trainees.

While John is yet to have an opportunity to challenge racist behaviour, he says the course made him “more forceful” in confronting sexism. He also credited the programme with helping him notice racism that he wouldn’t have spotted previously.

“While I was in the programme, I had the opportunity to attend some other events and my awareness of the race issue in each of them was heightened, which was very useful.”

Each participant in the programme had to submit an artefact featuring some of their learnings from the course. Sarah Dunton, Director of Nursing at King George Hospital, created a graphic featuring quotes that give different perspectives on respect and racism.

And what did our staff take away from the programme?

“For me, there were three bits of advice that I picked up from the course,” said Clare. “One is to not feel challenged by the propect of having a difficult conversation. Use it as an opportunity to grow yourself and listen to what others have to say because you’ll be better and stronger for it.

“Don’t speak for other people. Be really conscious of the loudest voices in the room and give those that are quieter the opportunity to speak so you hear from everyone and get a balanced view, and make sure there’s a safe space they can speak confidently.

“Finally, say a person’s name correctly. If you don’t know how to, then apologise and ask how you say their name. That’s a really powerful thing to do and is the very start of being as inclusive as you can.”

Sara Najjuma, Head of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, said: “As a Trust, we’re committed to ensuring all of our staff have positive experiences at work and having senior leaders who are educated on the issues of race and discrimination.

“I’m proud to have Clare, Jo, John, and Sarah as white allies.”