Britain’s social care services are used by people from a wide diversity of ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Services therefore need to be accessible. We need to make particular efforts to reach out to vulnerable people who might have been deterred from approaching agencies which appear not to relate to their special needs and aspirations, and to demonstrate that we welcome and celebrate the wide range of people in the community generally and among the users of services in particular. We respond to service users’ right to express their diversity in the following ways.
- Positively communicating to our service users that their diverse backgrounds enhance the life of the community.
- Respecting the ethnic, cultural, and religious practices of service users.
- Outlawing negatively discriminatory behavior by staff and others.
- Accommodating individual differences without censure.
- Helping service users to celebrate events, anniversaries and festivals which are important to them.