We are working hard to eradicate all forms of abuse, sexism, harassment, racism and violence in our Trust.

We want the workplace to be a safe place for the people who work for us as well as the service users we help and their carers.

That’s why we do not tolerate any verbal, physical or sexual abuse towards staff or service users.

If you are visiting one of our sites you might see images or posters around the building like this, reminding everyone of the important message.

Greg Hackney, deputy director of operations, said: “It is very important that everyone who works for us and anyone who uses our services feels safe when doing so.

“If you are visiting one of our sites please remember the person behind the member of staff and consider the message contained on the posters.”

At SHSC we are:

Anti racist

• We have an anti-racism statement that you can read here
• To help us with our anti racist approach, we are working on patient and carer race equality framework (PCREF). This is a mandatory frameworkfrom NHS England that will help us on our journeys to becoming actively anti-racist organisation by ensuring that we are responsible for co-producing and implementing actions to reduce racial inequalities in our services

Tackling violence and aggression

• We want everyone at our sites to feel safe, supported and empowered to report all incidents of violence and abuse and feel confident that action will be taken to keep you and other people safe
• We are putting in place the NHS violence prevention and reduction standard to help us make sure that we are making progress in seven areas to reduce violence
• In addition to the national standard, we are using least restrictive practice to help reduce incidents of violence. This means we use a strengths-based and person-centred way of delivering care and support while minimising the use of restraint
• We also run RESPECT training which is about a person-centred approach based on support not control
• We are also working on the culture of care standards for our mental health inpatient areas. This will help us to provide care on inpatient wards that is more therapeutic and compassionate. Find out more here

Ensuring sexual safety

• Sexual safety in our Trust is about creating an environment where service users and staff are protected from unwanted, inappropriate, or harmful sexual behaviours
• We adhere to the NHS Sexual safety in healthcare organisational charter. Find out more about the charter on the NHS England website