We recognise that experiences of racism are not uniform and may differ significantly across racialised communities, identities, cultures,
faiths, and lived experiences. 

Racism is more than prejudice. It is a system of advantage and disadvantage based on race, reinforced through
policies, culture, and structures.

Racism operates at:

• Interpersonal: harassment, microaggressions, prejudice
• Institutional: bias in recruitment, progression, disciplinary processes
• Structural: health, education, housing, justice inequities

Intersectionality matters: race interacts with gender, disability, sexuality, and socio-economic status, compounding inequalities.

Our definition of anti-racism mirrors the NHS: taking intentional action to address and eliminate racism, recognising that simply being “non-racist” is insufficient.

"At East London NHS Foundation Trust, we believe racism has no place in our services, our workplaces, or our communities. We know that tackling
it requires courage, humility, and sustained action — and we commit to being an organisation that listens, confronts inequity, and is accountable for
making measurable progress.”

1. Acknowledge
Acknowledge racism as real, systemic, and harmful, and recognise the impact it can have on people’s health, wellbeing, opportunities,
experiences, and trust in services.

2. Act
Take meaningful action to embed anti-racist practice across our workforce, services, leadership, governance, and decision-making processes.

3. Be Accountable
Promote transparency, measurable improvement, and organisational accountability through reporting, governance, and continuous learning.

4. Collaborate
Work in partnership with staff networks, service users, carers, communities, and partner organisations to ensure lived experience informs improvement and change.

5. Sustain Change
Support long-term cultural change through leadership, training, quality improvement, coproduction, and ongoing organisational reflection and
learning.

For Patients and Service Users

• Use PCREF data to identify and act on inequities in detention, waiting times, missed appointments, restrictive practice, and outcomes — with directorate-level improvement plans reviewed quarterly.
• Co-produce service improvements with service users, carers, and communities, ensuring lived experience shapes decisions rather than just informing them.
• Improve ethnicity data recording across all services, with completeness reported annually in the EDI (Equity, Diversity and Inclusion) Annual Report.
• Support teams to use local inequity data to drive quality improvement, with progress tracked through the PCREF Steering Group.

Leadership and Workforce

• Use WRES data to track workforce equity
• Strengthen inclusive recruitment, progression, and disciplinary processes
• Expand mentoring, sponsorship, and leadership programmes
• Directorate PCREF leads embed anti-racism in services

Resources and Enablers

• Equality Impact Assessments embedded into all major policies and service changes
• HR, Estates, and Digital ensure environments and processes are inclusive
• Allocate resources to PCREF implementation and anti-racist initiatives

Engagement and Feedback

• PCREF lived experience spaces inform patient care
• WRES and WDES staff survey data shapes workforce priorities
• Use complaints, disciplinary, and grievance data to identify and address systemic bias
• Strengthen engagement with VCSE and community partners

Celebrating and Evidencing Success

• Publish WRES, WDES, and PCREF reports annually with actions
• Showcase local quality improvement projects on equity and anti-racism
• Recognise staff and services leading change at our annual Staff Awards

Progress against the Anti-Racism Plan and Charter will be monitored through existing Trust governance, assurance, and accountability structures to ensure commitments translate into measurable and sustained improvement.

Oversight will include:

• Quarterly reporting through EDI, Workforce, Quality, and relevant Board sub-committees
• Annual publication of Anti-Racism, PCREF, WRES, NHS Staff Survey, and workforce equity reporting
• Monitoring of inequities in workforce experience, patient experience, access, outcomes, complaints, restrictive practice, and organisational culture
• Annual publication of Freedom to Speak Up data analysed by ethnicity, reporting themes relating to psychological safety, discrimination, and inequity.
• Continuous organisational learning informed by lived experience, workforce feedback, staff surveys, inequity data, hate incident themes, patient feedback and service outcomes
• Ongoing engagement with staff networks, service users, carers, and community partners to inform improvement priorities and accountability
• Alignment with the NEL ICS Anti-Racism Framework, NHS England standards, and wider Trust
  strategic priorities