Priority 4: Capacity
4. Increase our capacity to become one team of valued, diverse, skilled people
Our challenge
Samaritans’ impact is limited by a lack of diverse representation in our people, by our capacity issues and the pressure some roles are under, and by our existing organisational structure.
Our ambition
To meet the demand for our services by recruiting more people, from a diverse range of communities, giving them the best support so they stay with us longer and work effectively together as one Samaritans team.
Scottish objectives:
- We will engage with the Samaritans organisational review to ensure that our operation in Scotland is consistently fit for purpose to deliver on our aspirations.
- We will build the capacity and capabilities of our people in Scotland so that we offer the best we can to those who need us or work with us.
- In both our volunteer base and staff team, we will actively develop and support diversity and inclusion through Scottish-specific initiatives, as well as through the wider Samaritans equity, diversity and inclusion strategy.
- We will develop our Scotland Committee to set direction and provide robust oversight of our ambitions in Scotland.
There has been a fair amount of progress towards looking at how to improve the diversity within Samaritans in Scotland. This is allowing us to become even more inclusive which, in turn, helps us reflect our communities and create opportunities to do more.
Julia Boxer-Peden, Edinburgh and the Lothians branch and co-Chair of Samaritans’ Disability Network