“Pride In Care” Quality Mark for West Sussex Charity

Carers Support West Sussex (CSWS) has become the first Carer organisation in the UK to earn the Pride in Care.

It’s a quality standard in recognition of its commitment to continuously improve the quality of its care and support for LGBTQ+ people over 50 years old.

PiC is managed and awarded by Opening Doors (OD) – the largest organisation for older lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT+) people in the UK – and is championed by Care England, with accompanying training endorsed by Skills for Care.

The OD assessors found:

1. CSWS staff are highly-engaged with LGBTQ+ issues, with just under 95% having a good level of knowledge of LGBTQ+ people, personally and through training.
2. All CSWS staff who responded to a survey felt their managers would be very or quite supportive about any LGBT+ issues reported to them.
3. CSWS policies demonstrated good inclusive practice
4. CSWS website is a model of good practice in LGBTQ+ inclusion and visual representation.

And Ben Thomas, a Pride in Care assessor, singled out the CSWS ‘Staff Wellbeing’ and ‘Volunteering’ policies as” genuine and welcoming”.

Carers Support West Sussex CEO, Sonia Mangan says: “We have provided advice, funding, and emotional and practical support, to over 30,000 unpaid family and friend carers, in all communities, across West Sussex. We are committed to making CSWS a positive and productive place to work for staff and volunteers from all backgrounds; and reducing barriers for our LGBTQ+ carers when accessing our support services. We are pleased we can now display the Pride in Care quality-mark on our website, and in other communications, to let the 2% of people in West Sussex in the LGBTQ+ community know we’re here to help.

Professor Martin Green, Chief Executive, Care England: “The Pride in Care quality standard will help people benchmark what good quality care looks like and be able to challenge any poor practice older LGBT+ people may encounter in health and social care provision.”

Jim Glennon, Head of Training and Policy at Opening Doors, says: “I’m so pleased that Opening Doors are able to award Pride in Care to our first carers organisation in Carers Support West Sussex. The assessment team were deeply impressed with the enthusiasm and commitment of senior management and their project team from start to finish in what is quite a demanding programme of equalities assessment. Our staff survey evidenced a workforce highly engaged with the importance of LGBTQ+ issues, the organisational policies demonstrated great inclusive practice and we felt that the website and general communications relating to LGBTQ+ inclusion were exemplary. The Opening Doors team commend Carers Support West Sussex for staying with the quality standard programme in these difficult pandemic times and look forward to working alongside the team to build on the achievement of their well-deserved award in the years ahead.”