Everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and respect

We’re committed to creating an organisational culture that is diverse and inclusive. A culture that nurtures and empowers every individual to flourish and reach their full potential.

Our Diversity and Inclusion strategy has been developed in partnership with our staff and volunteers, and we’re confident we’ve captured the invaluable comments, ideas and suggestions in our final document.

We’ve made significant strides over the past year

We have a Head of Diversity and Inclusion in post, we have set up our Diversity and Inclusion Action Group which is chaired by our CEO, all our staff have attended a diversity and inclusion workshop and anti-racism training.

We have reviewed and refreshed our Access to Work process and for the first time, collated diversity demographic data on our staff and Board.

We have set out to become a more diverse, inclusive and accessible charity and to reach the broadest possible range of people living with arthritis.

We will hold ourselves accountable for the changes we seek

To hold ourselves accountable we’ve translated our ambition into three goals, each are supported by cross-charity actions.

We recognise achieving this is going to take time and these goals set out the steps we’ll take to realise our ambition.

To ensure transparency, and to assist in the performance of our duties in line with the Equality Act 2010, we’ll measure and report on our progress in a rigorous and transparent way.

Each goal has its own measures and progress with be tracked at quarterly Diversity and Inclusion Action Group meetings.

Goal One: An inclusive and accessible culture that fosters belonging

By 2024, all our people will feel that they belong at Versus Arthritis, irrespective of their background.

Goal Two: Broaden the diversity of people against arthritis

Our staff and volunteer profile, notably our Board, Organisational Leadership team, Heads and Directors, will better reflect the broad range of people with arthritis and we will explore how to broaden the diversity of our communities pushing back against the injustice of arthritis.

Goal three: An inclusive and accessible experience for people with arthritis

We will always provide inclusive support for people with arthritis, treating everyone with dignity and respect at every stage of their journey with us, providing a platform for people with arthritis to influence our work and policy makers, regardless of age, gender or background.

2024: our vision

Delivering our first three-year strategy and action plan will help us achieve our vision to put diversity and inclusion at the heart of everything we do.

By 2024, we will have created a transformed, modern charity of which our staff, volunteers and stakeholders feel proud to be a part of.

You can view our Diversity and Inclusivity strategy, and if you have any further questions, or would like to know more, please email diversityinclusion@versusarthritis.org.