Develop a rainbow action plan that will support best practice across your organisation.
To be most effective, the rainbow action plan needs champions with dedicated paid time to do this work, ideally across different teams and levels of the organisation.
Using the Evaluate tool will help you identify specific areas of strength and where development is required.
The rainbow action plan can include updating policies and procedures to ensure they are rainbow-friendly. It can also involve looking at how the current strategic plan and vision for the organisation includes rainbow issues and perspectives.
It might also involve obtaining rainbow professional development for staff, and developing infrastructure that will embed that professional development into the organisation, to ensure continuous improvement.
It might specify the improvements needed for the physical space to become more inclusive, e.g providing gender neutral bathrooms.
The rainbow action plan needs to work for the particular context of the organisation. There will be some actions that are immediately achievable and others that are part of a long term plan.
The goal is to embed rainbow competence into the organisation, and this will take time. When there are rainbow champions or advocates for the plan with dedicated paid time for the work, it will progress faster and more efficiently. It will also be useful if there are clear processes for updating the action plan as things progress and change.
Take Action
Evaluate your organisation’s strengths and areas of further development.
Develop a rainbow action plan that identifies what actions your organisation can take to become safer and more inclusive for rainbow young people. Consider:
Long term goals, e.g what is the infrastructure needed to ensure staff have access to ongoing professional development? Or, how can you ensure rainbow voices of staff and service users are heard on a strategic level, ideally with decision-making power?
Immediately achievable tasks, e.g compile a list of rainbow organisations and display this in the reception area.
Create processes for your rainbow action plan to be developed by a range of people within the organisation. When asking for external input, e.g when asking for ideas or feedback from rainbow service users, make sure you value their time and expertise and offer material reimbursement.
Develop mechanisms for evaluating organisational progress and for updating the rainbow action plan.