Equal Opportunities & Diversity
FCA is fully committed to promoting equality of opportunity in everything it does.
We are an inclusive employer, embracing diversity in our workforce and in our recruitment and selection practices.
FCA seeks to operate within a framework of fairness, openness, integrity and accountability and expects the same of those providing services for the agency.
FCA key values and principles are to ensure that:
- All employment and service delivery policies and practices aim to reflect a positive valuing of human difference and diversity.
- All FCA staff and FCA foster carers are aware of and understand the agency’s commitment to equality of opportunity and their responsibilities in relation to this. Training and guidance for staff and foster carers will reinforce this, especially training for those involved in recruitment and selection decisions.
- Our workforce has the knowledge, skills and abilities to provide high quality services within a clear framework of anti-discriminatory, including anti-sectarian, practice.
- Our services are responsive, accessible, sensitive and appropriate to those who need and may benefit from them.
- Our recruitment, support and training of foster carers reflects the agency’s commitment to having a range of foster families sufficiently diverse to meet the ethnic, racial, cultural, linguistic and religious needs of children/young people requiring placement as well as any needs relating to disability, gender, religion or sexuality.
- Our recruitment, support and training of staff reflects this commitment to meeting the diverse needs of our children/young people and foster carers.
Foster carer pre and post approval training emphasises the importance of providing care which respects and reserves the ethnic, religious, cultural and linguistic background of children/young people who are looked after. Foster carers are provided with the necessary information, support and training to enable them to provide the best possible care and to promote the heritage of a fostered child/young person.
The participation of FCA staff, foster carers and children/young people in the development and implementation of FCA’s policies, procedures and practices is encouraged and facilitated with a clear and consistent focus at all times on achieving equality of opportunity.
In these ways, FCA ensures that all policies and practices are in line with relevant employment and service delivery related legislative, regulatory and good practice requirements.
