Equality & Diversity
Creative Support is committed to the promotion and celebration of diversity and equality for both staff and service users within our organisation.
We are an Equal Opportunities Employer. Our aim is to ensure that no applicant or employee receives less favourable treatment on the grounds of their race, ethnic origin, religion or belief, nationality, disability, gender, age, sexuality or responsibility for dependants. This commitment is reflected in our recruitment and selection procedures, training policies and supervisory and appraisal processes.
Gender Pay Gap Report
As an employer of 250+ employees, Creative Support is required by Law to carry out gender pay reporting under the Equality Act 2010 (Gender Pay Gap Information) Regulations 2017. This information is current on 5 April 2018 and will be updated annually hereafter.
Creative Support Gender Pay Gap Report
Creative Support’s staff team is very diverse and reflects the diversity of the communities within which we work. Across all services and local authorities, approximately 20% of our service users are from black and minority ethnic (BME) groups, and in May 2011, approximately 18.5% of our staff team described their ethnicity as being other than White British or White European. In order to ensure equality of access and to overcome barriers which may be the result of communication issues, service publicity is made available in a variety of formats and languages.
Creative Support has significant experience of providing culturally appropriate services to diverse groups of service users, both as part of mainstream services and specialist services for people from BME communities. We provide services which meet the religious, cultural, ethnic and linguistic needs of service users. We also ensure our services do not discriminate on the grounds of sexuality, gender or disability. All our employees are trained in anti-discriminatory practice and working in ways that are non-judgmental and person-centred. We also train our staff to understand the discrimination that certain individuals from vulnerable groups in society may face, to enable them to act appropriately when providing support.
At all times Creative Support promotes a culture of respect, sensitivity and acceptable behaviour towards all service users and employees.
Quality
Creative Support is committed to the achievement of quality standards in all areas of service delivery, to a philosophy of continuous improvement and to gaining outcomes for service users. We promote agency-wide standards of good practice and meet statutory requirements whilst actively acknowledging the need for local innovation and diversity.
Creative Support has a quality assurance team who are responsible for co-ordinating quality assurance functions including internal audits, Investors in People, Supporting People Quality Assessment Framework (QAF), Care Standards, complaints, compliments and suggestions and other continuous improvement initiatives.
Our internal quality assurance system involves annual inspections and periodic unannounced inspections of our services by teams of quality auditors recruited from all levels within Creative Support. We also have trained lay assessors, most of whom are current or ex-service users who fully participate within the audit teams (for a first-hand account of service user involvement from one of our service users, click here). The audit teams put together a quality audit report based on their inspection and give constructive feedback and recommendations with clear and achievable targets. This ensures that effective action is taken to quickly address problems or areas of difficulty, whilst highlighting areas of good practice.
Creative Support’s internal quality standards were developed in line with the Supporting People QAF, the National Domiciliary & Residential Care standards and the REACH standards for Supported Living. Our standards are underpinned by the agency philosophy and the principles of Valuing People. Our commitment to quality assurance is reflected in the company Business Plan.
Creative Support gains accreditation under the Supporting People programme in each authority within which we operate Supporting People services. All of our Supporting People funded services work within the QAF and have been inspected in relation to the QAF core standards. We have consistently reached a high grading in QAF assessments.
Many of our services are also registered with the CQC (Care Quality Commission, formerly CSCI) under the residential or domiciliary care standards. We have worked hard to achieve these standards within our services and we proactively work to improve services in relation to any recommendations given by CQC inspectors.
We believe that the support and development of our staff is key to the delivery of a high quality service and continuous improvement. As a member of the British Quality Foundation we have recently implemented the Business Excellence Model of Quality Assurance which involves staff consultations. We are also an accredited Investors In People organisation, based on our commitment to training and development, business planning, and effective communication with employees.