Becoming an anti-racist organisation: progress update September 2021

We are resolute in our aim to become an anti-racist organisation. This is critical to our remit as a charity. People from racialised communities are more likely to experience mental illness and less likely to receive the care and support they need. Change is essential and actively challenging racism is central to this.

In becoming an anti-racist organisation we know that we have to shine a spotlight on ourselves as much as we do the outside world. Our policies and practices must be fair and equitable. To this end we appointed Oxytocin, specialists in reviewing organisational approaches to race, who conducted an independent review at the end of 2020. Their final report has been made available to all Rethink Mental Illness staff and the recommendations of the report are on our website.

We fully acknowledge that the report concludes that we have a great distance still to travel in our journey to becoming an anti-racist organisation. A central theme is that change requires proactive action, simply being against racism is not enough.

In commissioning an independent, comprehensive and honest review we knew that many of the learnings would be challenging. But we also knew that meaningful change could not be achieved without it. We are determined to become the organisation we aspire to be – internally fair and equitable and externally proactive in challenging racial injustice and the intersection with mental illness.

We welcome internal and external scrutiny of progress made and will continue to provide regular updates via our website in addition to direct updates to our staff and supporters.

Rethink Mental Illness Executive team, September 2021