Friday 23 May 2025 | 14:15-15:15

Format: Presentation

Stream: Leading

Content filters: Recommended for those working at system level in QI

Session chairs: Prachi Khanna Lived Experience and Communities Panel; India and Alexander Hijmering FORWARD; Netherlands

PART ONE: Anti-racist leadership in action 

This session will explore anti-racism as an embodied leadership practice and approach to organisational development and improvement.

We’ll share learning from Activate, a ground-breaking leadership development collaboration between two prominent health and care charities, brap and The King’s Fund.

Participants will leave the session better able to:

• Appreciate how racialised thinking leads to the racialised outcomes that keep us trapped and unable to improve


• Understand anti-racist leadership as based on six principles of practice


• Recognise the important role White leaders have in anti-racism, and how they can take it up

This session will showcase the work of senior White leaders across the UK National Health Service.

By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

• Understand and discuss the key aspects of anti-racist thinking and practice


• Start conversations that matter, with their teams and organisational leaders, on how more diverse and inclusive practices can drive service improvement


• Grasp the difference between tackling the root cause or symptoms of racism, and the implications of this for improvement work

Simon Newitt The King’s Fund; England

Joy Warmington BRAP; England

 

PART TWO: “Beyond our comfort zone”: addressing systemic racism, privilege and power to improve patient experience in a low-secure mental health unit

“Having worked in public services for many years, this is the best example of a clinically driven project that is genuinely making a difference. The way that you have truly co-produced in partnership with lived experience is fantastic.” (CEO, Sheffield Health and Social Care NHS FT)

Between August 2023 and June 2024, colleagues at Forest Lodge low secure inpatient unit in Sheffield were one of fifteen teams across England to take part in the first phase of the Mental Health Act Quality Improvement Programme – commissioned by NHS England and jointly delivered by Virginia Mason Institute and The PSC.

In this session, the team will share their deep exploration of the impact of systemic racism, privilege and power on the ward, together with their co-produced improvement work – some more traditional, some quite radical – to improve the equity of experience of all patients, and especially of those from ethnically diverse communities.

By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

• Understand what it means to apply an equity lens to all aspects of a hospital ward’s daily practice and decision-making


• Reflect on the nuanced manifestations of systemic racism, privilege and power in mental health inpatient care


• Be inspired by the potential for radical co-produced change which is both a journey of emotional discovery and underpinned by a structured improvement process

Kim Parker Sheffield Health and Social Care NHS Foundation Trust; England

Wendy Korthuis-Smith Virginia Mason Institute; USA

Gambinga Gambinga SACMHA Health & Social Care; England

Carl Reeves Sheffield Health and Social Care NHS FT; England

Harris Lorie The PSC; England