The King’s Fund’s links with colonialism and slavery

At The King’s Fund, we need to work towards righting the impact of historical wrongs by using our resources, expertise and influence to both support diverse communities to access equitable outcomes and experiences in health and care, and work towards embedding anti-racist approaches within the health and care system.  

We believe that the best way for The King’s Fund to start this work is to focus on four areas: 

• embedding anti-racism across the health and care system 

• widening access to our leadership development programmes  

• diversifying the charity and health policy talent pipeline 

• reflecting a more diverse history of health and care. 

We believe these are the areas where we can currently have the greatest impact but we also know that there is more that we could and should do. These commitments mark the beginning of our work to address our origins and history. This work will be an essential part of our organisation’s annual planning cycle and, to ensure we are accountable, we will report on progress in our annual Trustees’ report. 

Embedding anti-racism throughout our society is necessary to overcome the stark inequalities highlighted during the Covid-19 pandemic. We recognise that work to drive wider meaningful and sustainable change starts close to home. 

We have already begun this work. In 2022, all staff at The King’s Fund took part in mandatory anti-racism training and following that training, staff (as individuals and as teams) are continuing to explore our role in building an anti-racist organisation. We have worked to ensure that the voices we hear from and amplify feature the communities we serve and the wider world – and from 2024 we will publish data on the diversity of those voices (for conferences, blogs, podcasts and media).  

Tackling the worst health outcomes is a core priority for The King’s Fund. This means our policy, research and conference work reflects how to address inequalities in outcomes and experiences, including for ethnic minority communities. 

We will continue to review our leadership and organisational development offers to ensure anti-racism practice, including understanding of white privilege, underpins our work. This is an ongoing process of reviewing and improving our collective and individual practice, and includes learning alongside our clients. 

But there is much more we can do. In 2024, we will launch a free online learning resource focusing on anti-racist leadership, which builds on our current resources on leading with compassion and supporting the wellbeing of staff. One of the aims of these free, self-directed learning tools is to widen access to leadership resources.  

The King’s Fund has provided staff and leadership development programmes since the NHS was established in 1948. While the health and care workforce is one of the most ethnically diverse in the public sector, we know that this diversity doesn’t translate to the senior leadership levels of the system and that staff from ethnic minority backgrounds consistently report worse experiences in terms of their lives and careers. 

We have an opportunity to ensure that our contribution to developing current and future leaders in health and care helps address this inequity. We are committed to improving our data collection around the programme applicant process to ensure equity, monitor trends and identify actions to improve diversity across our programmes. We will also review our approach to providing targeted bursary places for health and care staff to ensure participants on our flagship leadership development programmes reflect the diversity of both the health and care sector and the wider population.  

The NHS has one of the most ethnically diverse workforces in the public sector. However, this picture is not reflected in the national bodies responsible for shaping the strategic direction of the health and care system. Data from 2019 shows that while the average NHS Trust has 20 per cent ethnic minority representation, this drops to 14 per cent in national bodies. In the voluntary sector workforce ethnic minority representation in the workforce is less than 9 per cent. 

If our health and care systems are to live up to their full potential in tackling health inequalities, being anchor institutions and to serve the needs of a diverse population, health policy needs to become a more diverse sector. 

The King’s Fund has already taken steps to become a more diverse organisation by working to understand more about inclusive recruitment and embedding this approach across our recruitment processes to reduce bias. Over the past few years we have introduced positive action posts in our Policy and Library teams. Whilst we are currently pausing recruitment to these posts, they have been hugely valuable for both us and our trainees, and as per our commitment to continuing these posts, we will review them next year. We publish information in our Trustees’ annual report on the diversity of membership of our board, committees, and Advisory Council, and of our senior decision-makers. 

To support a richer talent pipeline in the sector, we are committing to creating more opportunities for talent from ethnic minority communities within our sector through engagement with employment and career outreach. As a first step, from 2024 we will host an intern as part of Health Data Research UK’s Black internship programme. We will undertake other outreach activities, for example, in schools and further education. 

We will use The King’s Fund resources to support the work and development of small charitable organisations that support diverse communities. Initially, we will offer the expertise of our Library team through providing free literature searches, and we will also provide free training seminars on key communications skills and techniques for charities that support diverse communities. We will provide more information on access and eligibility to these offers soon. 

The decolonising the curriculum movement has powerfully demonstrated the limitations of the stories that we tell about ourselves, our society and our histories. The story of the formation of the NHS is intertwined with the story of Windrush and the sacrifices and contributions that the Windrush generation made in the early years of the NHS. There are many stories that help us understand the rich and complex picture of our past and what this means for our future. With this in mind, we commit to using our platform to highlight these often-hidden narratives and to celebrate a more diverse history of health and care. 

In the past year, we have launched two online exhibitions:

Open Wounds 

In 2022 we hosted Open Wounds, an exhibition exploring the connections between health, racism and inequalities, and how this has affected generations of Black people. It does so through the eyes of the Black community itself, and the exhibition was created and developed by Tottenham Rights.  

In summer 2023 we launched the virtual Open Wounds exhibition, so more people can experience the power of the exhibition. 

You called and we came: Windrush and the NHS 

We have the privileged function of our Library, which allows us to delve into the history of health and care. In June 2023, to coincide with the 75th anniversary of the landing of HMT Empire Windrush, we launched a virtual exhibition reflecting the experiences of members of the Windrush generation, and their descendants, in the NHS. 

The environment around us can have an impact on us and our work. When our offices are fully refurbished next year we will take the opportunity to rename our staff meeting spaces to ensure they better reflect the rich diversity of The King’s Fund and the wider health and care system.