As I see it – the latest blog from Sue Symington

Despite the work of the Integrated Care Board being challenging, I have never seen members of the board cry.

Yesterday I did.

In September the board began a programme of Diversity Essentials training, facilitated and enabled by Tony McCaffery from Diversity Scotland. The purpose of the programme is to further educate the board around diversity and inclusion in its widest sense, and so providing the board with greater knowledge and awareness in their leadership and decision making.

We have started the programme by understanding more about our own geography and our own organisation, the NHS. Although this programme of learning was planned before the riots in August, it is a timely intervention.

To stimulate the board’s learning Tony shared a number of films from our own NHS colleagues in which they described their own experiences of discrimination on the grounds of their ‘difference’ – both inside the NHS and in their day to day life. In different ways, and with different styles , these honest voices brought alive the challenges faced daily as a result of  ‘difference’, and which we face organisationally in our zero tolerance stance in respect of discrimination. The board are hugely grateful to these individuals for sharing their feelings so eloquently and so openly. We will be sharing these and other stories with our colleagues over weeks and months.

What we heard silenced the board, angered the board that such behaviours exist in our NHS and in some cases moved the board to tears.

Out of that silence, that anger and those tears, will come action.