Introduction
At Accord, we understand that housing, care and
support play a fundamental role in everyone’s
life chances. We believe that striving for
greater equality provides a better balance of
opportunities for colleagues and customers.
We occupy a pivotal role, not only as service providers,
but also as community anchors with an influential and
long-term stake in places where we work. Sustainability,
opportunity and transparency are really important to us.
Accord has always valued fairness and diversity across
colleagues, customers and services. Our existence as
a social organisation has its origins in commitment
to equality, fairness and social justice. Our customers
are living in some of the most hyper-diverse wards
across the country and we work with people from many
different ethnic backgrounds as well as people who
have physical disabilities and mental ill health and
others who are vulnerable in different ways. We are
also committed to developing an organisational culture
that values people as individuals, recognising the
contribution each person can make.
Elisabeth
Buggins
(Chair)
Accord’s customer base is diverse and represents the
demographics of the areas in which we work. Striving
for greater diversity helps us to ensure we provide the
right services and meet the right needs and aspirations
of our customers. This, our Fairness Annual Report,
details our colleague, customer and community profiles
and highlights our work to date to ensure we positively
challenge prejudice and promote equality and diversity
in every aspect of our work.
Whilst this report is, in the main, a look back at the
challenges and successes of the year to 31st March 2020,
in our action-planning and thoughts for the future it
would be remiss of us not to mention the impact that
COVID 19 has had on many of the most vulnerable and
disadvantaged in society, including its disproportionate
effect on BAME communities, and of course the swell
of support across the world for the Black Lives Matter
campaign. We are responding actively to these issues,
demonstrating that they are important to Accord and we
will commit, both from a Board and an Executive team
perspective, to play our part in tackling them.
Chris Handy
(CEO)
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