Today we celebrated all the amazing organisations who have completed our Black, Asian & Minority Ethnic Cultural Competence Certification Scheme. Congratulations to the CVUHB Memory Team, Platfform, New Horizons, Mind Cymru, Public Health Wales, and The Betsi Cadwaladr Mental Health and Learning Disability Services and the Learning Disability Therapeutic Support Service, who are all committed to continuing to make services more culturally competent and promoting diversity, inclusion & belonging.
We heard from incredible speakers, including the First Minister, the Rt Hon Mark Drakeford MS, who spoke about the importance of identifying unconscious bias and building culturally competent services and organisations.
We were also joined by Professor Emmanuel Ogbonna, Professor of Management and Organisation at Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University, and Co-Chair Lead for the Implementation of the Anti-racist Wales Action Plan who said,
“Cultural competence is the foundation of all human action.”
“The individual is unaware of their own unconscious bias. Unearth your own prejudices, and this is where we tackle racism. Diverse Cymru are helping change mindsets…, helping others make change.”
Jane Hutt, Minister for Social Justice, added that Diverse Cymru’s Cultural Competence Scheme is vital to help “meet the goals of (the) Anti-Racist Wales Action Plan by ensuring action, ownership, accountability and sustainability in the development of cultural competency in workplaces across Wales.”
