The Client
SeeSaw is an independent Oxfordshire charity that provides grief support to children, young people, and their families and carers. The charity provides valuable and timely information, training, and direct support for schools. They also provide face-to-face support sessions for children and young people, usually within their own homes. By providing this support and sharing information, SeeSaw enables carers to manage the grief support needed by the children and young people in their charge.
SeeSaw has a team of clinical experts in bereavement and grief support who work very closely with families and schools, as well as a wider network of volunteers who provide support to the operations team. They are overseen by a Board of Trustees who provide strategic direction for SeeSaw’s aims and aspirations.
The Challenge
Discussions at the trustee board level had highlighted the importance of understanding diversity and the potential impact that bias may have across the wide-ranging situations that SeeSaw staff encounter. Oxfordshire has one of the highest representations of non-White British communities in the UK (National Census, 2021), and families across Oxford have a diverse range of religious beliefs, values, and behaviours.
It was considered both important and necessary, therefore, for the staff and supporters of SeeSaw to be aware of their underlying values, beliefs, and judgements in order to provide the most inclusive and fair services to families across Oxfordshire.
As a Trust, SeeSaw has very limited resources and relies on grants and the support of donors to fund activities. SeeSaw reached out for support from Pearn Kandola to design and deliver a programme that enables discussions about diversity and inclusion and their influence on family services. The programme – a series of workshops – would include support for trustees, volunteers, and the operations team.
The Solution
We agreed on three key objectives for the programme:
- To raise awareness of the impact that bias can have in everyday decision-making
- To discuss ways in which the work of SeeSaw staff may be enhanced with cross-cultural awareness
- To identify useful personal actions that SeeSaw trustees and staff can take to promote and strengthen the understanding of EDI within the charity.
We designed a programme to provide focused, practical insights that allowed the Trustees and their teams to move from theory to practice. The programme addressed a number of important elements:
- Information to build awareness of bias and how everyday decision-making can be impacted by bias. We built awareness of System 1 and System 2 thinking, looked at a range of different situations that affected SeeSaw’s delivery, and considered how to integrate the learning into practice.
- We shared the core elements of inclusion for leaders and team members to encourage discussion and reflection on how the Trust creates greater inclusion with its clients and with staff and volunteers.
- We facilitated breakout discussions on what employees at SeeSaw can do to build team inclusion, sharing examples and ideas for action.
- We discussed where each of the actions would have the greatest impact for SeeSaw and agreed on the next steps.
While diversity and inclusion can feel like challenging topics for many employees, we delivered a short programme that was highly engaging and thought-provoking for all attendees.
The Outcomes
Following the programme, the trustee Board agreed that an EDI working group would form, made up of a combination of staff and trustees. The working group has been meeting regularly to review DEI policies and practices within SeeSaw and to make recommendations for clinical and fund-raising practices. The group is now in the position to present a three-year EDI strategy to the board.
The trustees have fully embraced EDI practices, adding this to the ethos of the organisation, the way that new trustees and employees are recruited, resulting in a wider range of excellent candidates coming forward for new positions.
EDI is also a standing agenda item on all sub-committees and full board meetings. Over the next year, the SeeSaw trustees will gather meaningful data to report on and monitor progress. EDI is well on its way to being truly embedded within the organisation at all levels.
Comments from the client:
“The board recognised the necessity of developing an EDI strategy, acknowledging that to achieve this, the trustees must come together and examine the unconscious biases we might bring to the table. We knew these biases, if left unchallenged, could potentially hinder our efforts in establishing the right EDI strategy for the charity. The Pearn Kandola approach proved to be exactly what we needed. Since then, we have hit the ground running, and SeeSaw is truly on its way to embedding an authentic EDI culture that informs everything we do.”
Debbie Chapel, SeeSaw Trustee and Chair of SeeSaw’s EDI subgroup.
“When we approached Pearn Kandola, we had established principles of equity and inclusion in our approach to the service we offer, but we recognised that these principles needed to sit in an overarching strategic approach. Pearn Kandola’s training was a fantastic way to involve all our staff, volunteers, and trustees in this work and to embed whole organisational ownership of the strategy and future planning. We are very grateful to have benefited from Pearn Kandola’s expertise in this field.”
Judith Mulligan, SeeSaw Director
