in2gr8mentalhealth joined the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) Equality, Diversity and Inclusion forum this morning.
We spoke up from our lived experience, about:
the commonality of lived experience in the profession;
how great fitness to practice fear is around sharing any mental health difficulties as a provider of services and how HCPC could help destigmatise;
how people have lived experience of mental health difficulties and practice competently;
questioning how the mental health of registrants is supported through any F2P process, whether they have previous lived experience or not;
how the qualified and training experience of sharing mental health difficulties can often be poor;
taking a systemic view: what the HCPC's role could be in holding to account systems they accredit which are toxic to EDI issues. To what extent can an organisation be fit to practice! Holdnig both the individual and the organisation in mind.
There will be a second forum gathering in December or January time and we look forward to hearing what some of the possibilities might be.
There was a strong showing this morning from all who attended, speaking across the raft of similar and different concerns regarding all protected characteristics and their intersectionality. People valued a statement being written, but were also concerned about how statements get turned into operationalising change! We agree.