UK Coaching is the leading organisation for coaches of physical activity and sport. We want this UK Coaching Equity, Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion strategy – "In it together – creating lasting cultural change" – to be reflective of our long-term values and ambitions, so it has been written for our people, by our people.
We believe everyone has the right to live free from harm, abuse, exploitation and neglect regardless of age, ability or disability, sex, race, religion, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, socioeconomic background, marital or gender status.
We acknowledge that there are barriers for specific populations, as explored within the protected characteristics featured in the Equality Act of 2010. Within this strategy, we commit to key actions that address all of these barriers.
The ultimate UK Coaching EEDI ambition is to make long-lasting internal and external cultural change in relation to tackling inequalities.
We strive to embrace diversity and the richness that can be found in cultural differences and promote an environment where individuals can thrive, be respected, work in collaboration, and learn.
From an external perspective, we make reference to how we work with our external partners, identify opportunities to work in collaboration, our contracted workforce, products, programmes, working groups and legislation.
From an internal perspective, we refer to our culture, Board, staff, policies, and processes.
To achieve lasting and sustainable cultural change, research, insight, feedback, lived experience and working in collaboration will provide the foundations to what UK Coaching will do to address inequalities both externally and internally.
For this reason, this strategy provides a dual perspective, aiming to outline the UK Coaching External and Internal EEDI goals, and the interventions and actions we plan to take to achieve maximum impact.
The strategy will link into our Diversity and Inclusion Action plan (DIAP), which is one of the Code for Sport Governance requirements set by Sport England / UK Sport.
It is underpinned by the Sport England ambitions outlined in ‘Uniting the Movement’ and the UK Sport ambitions towards Brisbane 2032. It outlines the specific, measurable qualitative and quantitative EEDI objectives we plan to achieve and will detail:
- UK Coaching EEDI goals, objectives and actions required to achieve these
- how we will monitor, measure and quality assure our EEDI actions
- how we will work collaboratively to achieve our actions.
UK Coaching strives to ensure that through our external and internal EEDI work, our ambitions and values will be aligned, reflecting the moves we want to make towards creating positive and lasting cultural change, where every individual will be supported to be their authentic self.
The diagram below illustrates how we will continue linking everything we do from an EEDI perspective and captures the intentions of the strategy and our Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan (DIAP). We would like what we strive to promote and achieve externally to be reflected by the culture, attitudes, and behaviours of our internal infrastructure.