Our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Plan 2025-2028

From 2022-2025, our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) plan was called 'Advancing Equity and Inclusion'. In 2025, we have reviewed the work we have done over the three years of that plan and identified what went well and some of the challenges we experienced. We achieved most of our objectives but we still have lots of work to do. If you want to read that review then you can request it from edi@gmmh.nhs.uk.  

One of the things we learned is that we need to make things simpler and easier for everyone to understand and remember. For a summary, you can read a bit more about the plan’s three key priority areas below.

Becoming an Anti-Racist Organisation

In order to become a truly anti-racist organisation, we will:

  • Celebrate the diversity our Global Majority staff bring and take positive action against racism
  • Publicly, frequently and consistently voice our commitment to anti-racism in order to demonstrate to service users, carers and staff that we will not tolerate discrimination of any kind
  • Make sure every single member of staff from the global majority has access to someone they can speak to who understands their lived experience and can champion their cause if needed
  • Embed inclusive and anti-racist principles into policies, governance, and strategic planning
  • Ensure leadership accountability through regular reporting and transparent metrics
  • Seek ways to share our stories about who we are and what connects us. Celebrate our cultural diversity in ways that engage, challenge and bring joy
  • Support targeted pathways for career progression for global majority staff, identifying and removing barriers to senior leadership roles
  • Use PCREF (Patient & Carer Race Equality Framework) as an enabler to help guide the co-design of services with racially diverse communities to ensure cultural relevance
  • Reduce health inequalities in patient outcomes by encouraging innovative, collaborative and impactful new ways of working

Creating Equity in Access

In order to create equity in access, we will:

  • Ensure services are accessible and welcoming to people with disabilities, neurodiversity, our LGBTQ+ community and all groups who experience inequality generally, and specifically in mental health
  • Acknowledge and celebrate the importance of faith in recovery to those who hold it dear
  • Provide multiple access routes: digital, in-person, outreach, and community-based
  • Improve access to and provision of British Sign Language interpretation services, spoken word translation and interpretation services and provide accessible information tailored to need
  • Improve availability and access to novel services that incorporate least restrictive principles and have a preventive focus
  • Use data to identify gaps in access and outcomes across protected characteristics and socioeconomic status
  • Develop targeted interventions (e.g., culturally adapted therapies, mobile clinics)
  • Embed equality impact assessments into service planning and commissioning
  • Embrace co-design of services and collaboration with service users and carers
  • Promote health literacy and self-advocacy through community education
  • Deliver awareness events to nurture inclusion and increase visibility

Building the Capacity to Thrive

In order to build our capacity to thrive, we will:

  • Focus on engagement, using data, discussions, awareness raising, personal stories and creating a compelling drive for change
  • Encourage innovation, research and quality improvement in EDI
  • Improve support for staff networks: access to resources, senior leader sponsorship, and enable autonomy for these networks
  • Facilitate safe spaces for staff to share lived experiences and influence change
  • Deliver ongoing EDI education tailored to roles and lived experience
  • Include EDI objectives in appraisals and integrate EDI into leadership development
  • Engage staff and service users in continuous learning through workshops, forums, and campaigns
  • Diversify leadership through inclusive recruitment and succession planning
  • Embed EDI into organisational key performance indicators (KPIs) and quality improvement cycles
  • Include EDI metrics in board reports and performance reviews
  • Publish annual progress reports and adapt our plans based on feedback

Delivering our EDI Plan

Our EDI Plan belongs to everyone in the organisation and monitoring its success is a shared responsibility. Different parts of the plan are overseen by different groups and these include our Anti-Racism Steering Group, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Oversight Group (EDIOG), Engagement and Experience Oversight Group (EEOG) and the People and Culture and Quality and Safety Committees.

Our small, specialist EDI team is supported by our staff EDI networks and Champions. We are also committed to working in partnership and offer our thanks to the many internal and external experts who are involved in both the development and delivery of the EDI Plan. These include our Service Users and Carers, the Trust Quality Improvement team, our PCREF, Wellbeing and Trauma Informed Care Leads, Healthwatch, Greater Manchester systemwide colleagues and many more.

Progress Updates

Our update on the 2025-2026 deliverables will be shared here in April so check back then to see how we have been getting on.

As a patient

As a service user, relative or carer using our services, sometimes you may need to turn to someone for help, advice, and support. 

Find resources for carers and service users  Contact the Trust