Tenovus Cancer Care awarded GOLD attainment level by Diverse Cymru during ceremony on Monday 2 October at City Hall, Cardiff.
The annual celebration, opened by First Minister Mark Drakeford, recognised participants who have achieved progress on their cultural competence journey. Tenovus Cancer Care is the first organisation to have achieved a gold attainment level so quickly on its first attempt after joining the scheme less than a year ago.
Diverse Cymru’s is a Welsh charity with a vision to help create a nation without prejudice or discrimination, where every person is equal, and diversity is celebrated. Its Cultural Competence Certification Scheme is an award-winning workplace development tool to help organisations implement good workplace practice, ensuring services are fair and equitable for Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic people in Wales.
Diverse Cymru currently works in partnership with over 170 workplaces across Wales to explore commonly held unconscious bias and to develop their cultural competence, so that their services and employment practices are fair and equitable.
Tenovus Cancer Care was presented its award by Dr Gaynor Legall, Chair of The Heritage & Cultural Exchange.
Accepting the award on behalf of Tenovus Cancer Care, Insight and Engagement Lead Hannah O’Mahoney, said: “Our aim is to give help, hope, and a voice to everyone affected by cancer.
Sadly, we will all be affected by cancer in our lifetime, and we should all have equal access to care and support. But we know this often isn’t the case and we recognise we have a role to play in making things better.
Our participation in the scheme has opened dialogue, hearts, and minds into what a culturally competent workplace should be. We went in not sure of where to start and left feeling motivated and full of ideas.
Thanks to the expertise of our trainers at Diverse Cymru, we learnt things wouldn’t happen overnight, but they gave us the confidence to start making sustainable changes.
We’ve made our own support services more accessible – such as changing our choir rehearsal venues from churches to more neutral settings - while calling out inequalities elsewhere. For example, co-producing a campaign to call for the collection of ethnic minority data in healthcare to help address inequalities.
It’s made us think about our attraction and recruitment processes so that we can welcome a more diverse workforce and volunteers. Working towards cultural competence has inspired us and brought us together as an organisation.
We know there is always more we can do when and we’ll continue to listen and learn to make a difference for everyone affected by cancer.”
