Several equity organisations (Sporting Equals, English Federation of Disability Sport, and Women?s Sport Foundation) have been instrumental in promoting equity and inclusion in sport. They have combined their efforts, along with the Home Country Sports Councils, UK Sport and the CCPR, and have developed ?The Equality Standard?.
The Equality Standard or ?Standard? is a framework to guide sports and community organisations towards achieving equality. It will assist organisations in developing structures and processes, assessing performance and ensuring continuous improvement in equality.
The Standard draws on lessons from Achieving Racial Equality: A Standard for Sport, published by Sporting Equals in December 2000. It serves as an excellent toolkit to assist organisations to work with all groups in the community.
Benefits
Applying the Standard will enable your organisation to:
- Provide a framework for achieving equality in sports
- Ensure democracy and the sound governance of the sport
- In crease the number of participants, members, coaches, officials, spectators and volunteers by reaching new audiences
- Help meet legal duties thereby reducing the likelihood of litigation
- Enhance the skills and knowledge base of your staff and volunteers
- Increase active involvement in equality at every level
- Improve equality practices through monitoring, evaluation and review methods
- Improve your chances of accessing funding and sponsorship
And for those that have already started to address equality issues, it will enable you to:
- Build on existing good practice in equality
- Assess and review current equality policy
- Assess and review equality performance and achievements
Within the Standard, there are two broad areas of activity with four levels of achievement (Foundation, Preliminary, Intermediate and Advanced) ? these will need to be evidenced. The two broad areas of activity are:
Developing Your Organisation ? what your organisation is. This will be a reflection of the culture, policies, leadership and people.
Developing Your Services ? what your organisation does. This is reflected in the impact that policies, leadership and people have on your organisation?s programmes, communications and customer service.
The evidence that is required you may already posses such as reports, reviews, minutes, surveys, training programs etc. This evidence is also useful because it can be used by some of the tools in the Measuring Impact part of the Sports Kitbag.
You can download the Standard here