In many ways, this last year has created a crossroads for human service organizations. The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have placed children and families of color at greater risk, with disproportionate impact on Black communities.  Demands for a reckoning on racial injustice and inequity in this country have called for fundamental and overdue changes to systems, institutions, and practices.

COA is committed to an accreditation process that supports organizations to advance equity, diversity, and inclusion. Our work to focus on racial and other inequities includes identifying where our accreditation standards can be strengthened to reflect the expertise, lived experiences, and strategies at the forefront of anti-racism work, and also highlighting areas of current practice where organizations should look to address discrimination and disparity.

In this post, we highlight some of those key areas that speak to equity, diversity and inclusion, such as community involvement and advocacy; representation in the workforce; training content; data collection and measurement; and culturally responsive service provision.

Community involvement and advocacy

Human service organizations do not exist in a bubble. They are shaped and often constrained by the same systemic biases and inequities that exist in legislation, policies, regulations, and funding streams. Ongoing community involvement, that includes outreach, education, and advocacy, is one way organizations can leverage available resources for the communities they serve and amplify the voices of their stakeholders. Our governance standards reflect the importance of partnership and communication within the community to effect change within organizations, communities, and in the systems of which they are a part. 

By building relationships and deeply engaging communities, organizations can identify unmet needs and build coalitions with the capacity to advocate for legislation and policies that will positively impact children, adults, and families. Organizations connect people to services, support, resources, and neighbors. COA promotes collaboration as a way for organizations to refine and leverage their service array and stay responsive to changing community needs. The standards emphasize the importance of collaboration within the organization and community at large through sustained communication across stakeholder groups.

Representation in the workforce

COA is intentional about communities served being represented throughout an organization, from program staff to executive leadership to the governing body. It is vital that the people served feel connected to and identify with the people and organizations with whom they are involved. A key part of assuring representation in the workforce is managing recruitment efforts that includes a diverse applicant pool. Recognizing that this process is important to an organization’s workforce assessment, the human resources (HR) and service standards speak to specific recruitment criteria, such as cultural identities and relevant lived experience, along with retention support.

Training content

In the human services sector, the workforce often does not adequately reflect the people and communities served, particularly when it comes to race and ethnicity. To address this gap, it is imperative that organizations ensure that personnel have the knowledge, awareness, support, interest, and skills necessary to effectively engage people with whom they may not share the same privileges, identities, cultural practices, or other lived experiences. Our training standards reflect the belief that staff cannot serve people effectively without a comprehensive understanding of the systemic forces, including racial bias and discrimination, that continue to shape the lives of generations of individuals and families.

Ensuring professional learning opportunities for all staff is essential to combating inequity in organizations where people from historically marginalized communities are frequently underrepresented in leadership roles and experience obstacles to advancement. COA’s training standards require organizations to maintain culturally responsive personnel development plans to ensure that staff have the competencies needed not only to fulfill their existing roles, but also to advance in their field and in the organization. The standards emphasize the importance of utilizing a wide array of educational methods and evaluating training effectiveness in a way that considers varying learning styles, needs, and professional development goals.

Data collection and measurement

In order to recognize and better understand patterns of systemic racism in human services and formulate just solutions, organizations need to have the right tools to evaluate where and how disproportionality and disparity exist. COA’s Performance and Quality Improvement (PQI) standards provide the framework for implementation of a sustainable, organization-wide PQI system that increases the organization’s capacity to make data-informed decisions thatsupport achievement of performance targets, program goals, positive outcomes, and level of satisfaction experienced by the staff and people served.

Organizations can identify disproportionality and address disparity in outcomes by tracking indicators according to race/ethnicity and other demographic variables. Data analysis is key to addressing racial disparity at all levels of decision-making, from strategic and annual planning to program evaluation.

Culturally responsive service provision

The damaging effects of institutional racial inequality are particularly evident in the child welfare system, where Black and brown children and families are disproportionally represented, experience service inequities, and have significantly poorer outcomes as a result. The Family Foster Care and Kinship Care (FKC) and Public Child and Family Services (CFS) standards speak directly to the necessity of culturally relevant and responsive service provision, including identifying appropriate services for birth families, assessing and training prospective resource families, and strengthening each child’s support network.

When it has been determined to be unsafe for a child to remain with their family, prioritizing placement with relative caregivers/kin and recruiting diverse foster or resource parents are key practices for ensuring that child’s connection to their communities and their cultural identities remain. Additionally, annual resource family recruitment plans should include targeted outreach activities that reflect the needs and characteristics of children in care. COA’s standards emphasize the importance of providing the support, investment, and resources necessary to address the unique needs of kinship caregivers in service to the children, families, and communities that they and the organizations with whom they partner serve.

COA is committed to ending systemic racism, oppression, and discrimination, and will continue to push forward standards of best practice that are relevant; reflect our commitment to equity, diversity, and inclusion; and support human services organizations in making positive, meaningful, and lasting impact in their communities.

As we continuously assess where the accreditation standards can be strengthened and further informed by best practices in anti-racism work, we want to hear from you. Please share your experiences and feedback about advocacy, staff development, training, and collecting outcomes by race at the link below. We welcome your input.

We at COA love what we do because we are passionate about promoting practices that will serve the greater good. Equity, diversity, and inclusion (or, as someone at COA recently put it, “belonging”) are critical components of that. We cannot truly do good work and better our communities if we are not also working to ensure that every community member can be safe, belong, and access equal opportunity.  

The road to fully realized equity, diversity, and inclusion is constant and requires no small amount of collaboration and introspection. If your organization is committed to embedding these efforts in every facet of your work, you might be at a loss of where to begin. Don’t stress! We’ve pulled together some of the resources we’ve drawn best practice inspiration from to help get you started.  This list captures a fraction of the information available out there, so we encourage you to continue your learning.

Do you have a resource to recommend? Post in the comments below!

Why Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Matter for Nonprofits—This goes through not only the “how” of implementing a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion plan, but also the “why” (whether your organization is a nonprofit or not). It provides several tools for embedding EDI into work at all levels of an organization.

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Harvard Implicit Association Test—This test is included in the article above, but it’s worth highlighting for itself. We cannot honestly approach this work without first grappling with any biases we ourselves may hold. This simple test is meant to help individuals recognize their own implicit bias.

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The MSW@USC Diversity Toolkit—A Guide to Discussing Identity, Power, and Privilege—Looking for specific exercises that you can conduct with your team? The University of Southern California Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work has created several to help you engage your team in this work.

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Racial Equity Resource Guide Glossary—In order to facilitate communication and avoid misunderstandings around sensitive issues, it’s important that everyone is using the same language. The W.K. Kellogg Foundation has pulled together a glossary to help you and your team get on the same page.

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The Alliance Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion resources, webinars, and group discussion forums—One of COA’s founding organizations and close partner, The Alliance for Strong Families and Communities, has a diverse spread of resources to help organizations work toward a just, fair, and inclusive society that contributes to everyone’s well-being. From tools to places for conversation, you’ll find it here.

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What’s the Difference Between Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity?— Though this General Assembly blog post is geared toward tech companies, its content applies to everyone. In it you’ll find a good breakdown of the differences between diversity, inclusion, and equity and how they’re related. There are also a few basic exercises that may be helpful for individuals to do on their own or with colleagues to further clarify the definition of each.  

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Diversity, equity, and inclusion consultants share a script to respond to racist microaggressions at work so you know exactly what to say in the moment—This article from Business Insider could be helpful particularly for staff of color, because it talks about how to approach and respond to microaggressions. It’s also helpful to organizations for learning about microaggressions and how they may or may not be perpetuated in the workplace.

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Urgently Looking for Anti-Racism Training for Your Company? Start Here.—This Medium article gives a blunt examination of where diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts at an organization often stand, which can provide a kick in the pants to get things started. It offers a nice set of questions and points to consider when engaging in diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.

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11 Books To Read If You Want To Be A More Inclusive Leader—This post from Forbes provides a great roundup of books that take on different aspects of EDI work. Each helps leaders (or aspiring leaders) to enhance “soft” skills and tackle implicit or unconscious biases to become more inclusive. It’s a great place to dive deeper into specific areas of interest and is sure to provide great food for thought for professional development work or even staff book clubs.

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Racial Equity Tools Library —Hungry for more resources than are offered here? This is a great database of information and tools to support individuals and organizations working to achieve racial equity.  This library is the product of a collaboration between several social policy focused national organizations, it offers tools, research, tips, curricula and data for anyone to use and learn from. Here you will find resources about justice at every level – in systems, organizations, communities and the culture at large.

What resources (publications, writers, researchers, etc.) have been helpful to you or your organization in promoting equity, diversity, and inclusion? Share them in the comments below!