Manchester Action on Street Health
Winner – Board Equity, Diversity and Inclusion
About the Charity
Manchester Action on Street Health (MASH) stands with women who sex work, supporting them to be safe, healthy and resilient. MASH first started out 30 years ago in response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, working out of a street outreach van. Since then, it has continued to support women who are sex working in ways that suit them. The charity supports some of the most marginalised women in the Manchester region; women who fall through the gaps in mainstream services, face stigma, discrimination and multiple barriers to accessing services. These women are on the sharpest end of social and health inequalities, and have been amongst the hardest hit by the Covid-19 pandemic.Free and confidential services are made accessible through the outreach van and drop-in centre, allowing MASH to provide basic essentials such as food, clothing, toiletries, and condoms along with support with housing, substance use recovery, counselling or mental health services, sexual and physical health services, finance and benefits advice, and help reporting crimes.
Charity number: 051754| www.mash.org.uk
Health Services | England – North West| 11-25 paid staff | 26-100 volunteers
What the Board Achieved
With a board of trustees drawn from a wide range of valuable professional expertise and skills, relevant lived experiences shared with the charity’s beneficiaries, and a diverse range of other protected characteristics, MASH is endeavouring to ensure equality, diversity and inclusion is embedded in everything from the governing board to its frontline personnel, recruitment to service delivery. Their entry said, ‘our people, including those we support and our workforce, experience structural and systemic barriers in many aspects of their lives, and we recognise the part we need to play as an organisation to dismantle systems and structures that discriminate and exclude in order to improve life for everyone … The women we support are particularly marginalised and excluded, so it is vital that we have a team — especially leadership — that reflects the diversity of our user group, and that we can work together to influence and implement change both within our service offer and wider systems.
For the board, a skills audit helped the charity find trustees with skills the board recognised it lacked, but with a recruitment process that also prioritised improving the diversity and inclusivity of the board so that it was more representative of the charity’s intended beneficiaries and wider community. The chair of the board, and those who chair sub committees, take responsibility for creating a collaborative and inclusive space for trustees to ask questions and develop in their roles, both leading by example and actively facilitating appropriate behaviour during group discussions and one-on-one check-ins with trustees. This transformation sparked further change, and the board went on to develop a Service User Advisory Panel of past and present service users that are able to give feedback to the board before changes are implemented across the charity. Work continues to develop a pathway for members to progress from the advisory panel to the board of trustees.
The implementation of a regular service user survey and commissioned research are tools that have been developed to help the board gain greater awareness and understanding of the women the charity aims to help. An EDI roadmap and action plan are in place to support an EDI Task Force — drawn from trustees, staff, volunteers and service users — in embedding, monitoring and improving the charity’s EDI progress. The result is an open culture across the organisation that allows for honest discussion, constructive challenge, and a better experience for all the charity’s stakeholders.
What Inspired Our Judges
‘Our Board EDI award goes from strength to strength. This year, judging the award gave us considerable food for thought. We think this is because a tide is turning, and boards across our sector are at last recognising the power of diverse leadership and taking concrete actions to make this a reality for themselves. The competition is pleasingly fierce and our decision to shortlist three very different organisations on different points of their journeys towards inclusive leadership is evidence of just that – the bar is being raised on inclusive leadership, and diverse approaches to reaching it create opportunities for all to learn from and adapt to fit their own circumstances.’ Board EDI Judge Jackie Driver OBE (Chair, SignHealth; Chair, BreakthroughUK).
The judges noted this was a truly ‘user-led’ charity and were particularly impressed with the results that were achieved within such a challenging area of work. It was a clear indicator of strong governance, and the awareness the board has for the systemic issues and the part it can play in dismantling oppressive structures. In particular, MASH provided evidence that board leadership was shaping and changing the nature of the charity’s work. The powerful mix of relevant professional experience and lived experience on the board allowed for a strong connection with the work the charity is undertaking. Judges saw evidence that EDI values had been embedded within the board’s decision making and the charity’s operational processes, but that trustees also understood that this was a journey and not something that could be accomplished once, and considered complete.
