Equality and Diversity Policy – Summary

CSASS aims:

• To promote equal opportunities and access
• Not to discriminate or break the law
• To value diversity.  We make better decisions as a diverse group.
• To recognise many groups and individuals are disadvantaged
• To remove barriers that prevent people from contributing
• To welcome feedback, especially from people with lived experience, and to take action to improve

CSASS will not tolerate inappropriate, violent or abusive behaviour.  We expect everyone to treat one another with dignity and respect.

We will:

• take action if people at CSASS don’t follow this policy
• make reasonable changes to help people access opportunities or services
• encourage representation on the Trustee board from under-represented groups
• communicate in ways everyone can access and understand
• listen to people within under-represented communities
• take all complaints under this policy seriously

Our policy relates to protected characteristics:  age, disability, race, sex, religion or culture, marital status and civil partnership, sexual orientation, pregnancy and maternity, and gender reassignment.

CSASS is a women-led, feminist organisation, working towards substantive equality for women.  We provide some women-only services and spaces.  CSASS provides services for survivors of any gender or none, including men, trans and non-binary survivors.  We aim to offer a broadly equal range of services available to all, over time.  Recruiting workers of all genders or none, including trans and non-binary workers is valuable to us.

Some women survivors find it is important that the women they meet at CSASS have lived their whole lives as women or girls.  This is so they feel safe, and confident their experience will be understood.  To provide spaces and services for these survivors, some opportunities at CSASS are open only to women who have lived their whole lives as women or girls.  These include:

• Counselling at our centre some days and evenings (on-line also available)
• Delivery of supportline and LiveChat service (these are available for all survivors to use)
• Some groupwork, advertised as women-only

Roles only open to women who have lived their whole lives as women or girls, include:

• Supportline/LiveChat workers
• All office-based staff
• A proportion of counsellors
• Workers delivering relevant groupwork

CSASS cannot guarantee all women clients and workers have lived their whole lives as women or girls, and we do not ask individuals to disclose this.  

We respectfully ask all clients and workers not to seek to join a group, service or role advertised as women-only, if they have not lived their whole life as a woman or a girl.  This is in order to respect the needs of some women survivors.

Updated July 2021