These intercultural awareness workshops are aimed at helping health, and social care staff in London make strategic changes to promote intercultural awareness and practice within health and care organisations.

The six-hour experiential workshop aims to develop participants’ self-awareness and awareness of experiences of institutional racism and oppression to enhance empathetic intercultural communication and apply this in a range of health and care settings. We intend that attendees will go on to share their learning and feel empowered to propose actions to enhance intercultural awareness within their teams and organisations.

Who is this Intercultural Awareness Workshop for?

The intercultural awareness workshop is open to all health and social care staff working for North Central London Organisations. Following the workshop, attendees will be expected to share their learning and feel empowered to propose actions that will enhance intercultural awareness within their staff teams.

Cultural and inclusivity awareness is everyone’s business. It includes a range of skills that help people think, feel and behave in a way that leads to effective and sensitive communication with people from other cultures. After this workshop, anyone curious about exploring their own processes, whether from dominant or minority groups, will be more attuned to the impact of their interactions and engagements with others.

Please note that spaces are limited, and KeepingWell NCL may monitor the number of spaces allocated to each organisation to ensure equity of access across the system. Therefore, we recommend that teams and organisations think strategically about nominating well-placed staff to benefit from, share and utilise this learning.

What will be covered during the workshop?

Institutional racism/domination/oppression: Participants will explore how people from minority communities cope with internal and external experiences of persecution. These will be framed not only within a historical context but also in the context of more recent events, including the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement, which have heightened the visibility of injustices and their impact, particularly among Black Asian, African, and Minority Ethnic communities.

The social and healthcare organisational context: Drawing on case studies, the workshop will explore how heightened tensions and felt inequalities might manifest in your workplaces and how intercultural awareness and sensitivity (or lack thereof) might impact staff teams and service users.

Foundation for sharing learning and taking action: The last part of the workshop will provide a space for participants to start thinking about how they can share their learning and devise an initial action plan to enhance intercultural awareness within their staff teams.