Hospice UK’s anti-racist statement

We recognise that people from minoritised ethnic communities can experience inequity across hospice and palliative care: in equitable access to services, in the delivery and quality of the care they receive, and in their outcomes and experiences of care. 

This inequity reflects wider barriers and disparities within healthcare and society, and addressing it is therefore integral to our mission to ensure equitable access to hospice care, fair and high-quality care delivery, and equality of outcomes for all.

We are committed to listening, learning and taking action. This includes working with hospices, communities, people with lived experience, colleagues, volunteers and partners to better understand barriers across access, care delivery and outcomes, and to support more inclusive services, policies and practices across the sector.

We know this work requires ongoing commitment and accountability. We will continue to review our own practices and support the hospice sector to become more equitable, inclusive and responsive to the diverse communities it serves.

We are at the beginning of this work and do not yet hold complete diversity data across all areas of the hospice sector. We are building a stronger evidence base, including reviewing our diversity data practice, so that our future actions are informed by reliable information and can be tracked openly over time.

Ways in which we will develop our work with the hospice sector include:

• Continue to promote anti-racism and inclusive ways of working across the hospice sector, including a commitment from the Senior Leadership Team to support members with ethnicity-disaggregated data across access, care delivery and outcomes;
• Share inclusive-practice resources, learning and evidence with members to support more equitable services.

Hospice UK is working to be an actively anti-racist employer and we want to hold ourselves to account. 

We understand that our actions need to be planned, strategic and sustainable, and that we should continually improve. We recognise that the burden of tackling racism must not fall on the shoulders of those who already experience these injustices.

Ways in which we are progressing as an anti-racist organisation include:

• Delivering on the commitments of our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) policy which underpins this work.
• Reviewed and continuing to review our policies and procedures to remove any potential bias and to highlight our commitment to anti-racism, particularly in our recruitment and learning and development practices.
• All our colleagues and volunteers undertake mandatory EDI training and managers have training on inclusive recruitment practices.
• All colleagues are required to consider the language we use when talking internally and externally about equality, diversity and inclusion. 
• We are working to create an open culture in which we celebrate diverse perspectives in everything we do. 
• We have increased the diversity of our Board of Trustees significantly in recent years and are benefiting from greater diversity of perspectives in our governance.
• We have a standing agenda item for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion at our Colleague Forum which meets every 2 months.
• We have introduced two new categories (EDI and Psychological Safety) into our anonymous pulse survey to make it easier for colleagues to raise concerns, in person or anonymously.
• We became members of Inclusive Employers in 2025.

Ways in which we will develop our efforts to be an anti-racist organisation include the following actions, which will be delivered within timeframes agreed by our Trustees and communicated to colleagues:

• The People and Culture team will establish a workforce diversity baseline so that progress can be reviewed and reported quarterly 
• Report to the People and Support Services Committee quarterly on data, recruitment and initiatives with actions and progress updates recorded
• Strengthen our speak up routes making clear how colleagues and volunteers can raise concerns, knowing they will be supported.
• Our SLT will acknowledge the impact of the growing incidence of racism and racist violence in the UK on our colleagues, collectively and especially individually for those with lived experience of racism, including antisemitism. This will be by reviewing pulse survey feedback, colleague forum feedback and other colleague insights quarterly, and identifying and tracking wellbeing and inclusion actions, with clear owners and regular reporting through governance routes
• The People and Culture team, supported by the SLT will continue to promote a workplace culture where we celebrate allyship through our values and behaviours work and sharing resources and webinars, so colleagues understand what inclusive practice looks like day to day.