SCEIP is a four-year project to deliver transformative, systemic change across the Services (Armed Forces) sector. It builds on the Halsden Centre’s expertise and commitment to shifting systems and structures, behaviours and attitudes, data and analysis – all of which stand in the way of equality for all.
Competitive funding
SCEIP is funded by the Armed Forces Covenant Fund Trust through their Transformational Grants programme.
Introduction
SCEIP will provide the evidence base to build better understanding of stakeholder needs (particularly veterans from ethnic and faith minorities) and inspire a more inclusive approach to support programme design, development and provision. SCEIP will provide innovative tools enabling service charities to recognise the inequalities in their working practices, their decision-making processes, and their programme outcomes, and empowering them to become more diverse and inclusive and better equipped to meet the needs of culturally-diverse armed forces communities.
Vision & aims
A lack of ethnic diversity in Service Charities negatively impacts people from ethnic or faith minorities. By overlooking their lived experience, unique needs, and concerns, programmes and services become less attracting, less accessible, and less effective for potential minority beneficiaries. Implicit biases shape how charity boards and leadership assess priorities, make funding decisions, and design initiatives, whilst outreach efforts and marketing materials fail to effectively engage or represent diverse communities. A lack of cultural sensitivity leads to the creation of unwelcoming environments, perpetuates exclusion and may even cause harm.
Through proactive engagement with underrepresented groups, and effectively utilising lived data, SCEIP will drive Service Charities to become more culturally sensitive, reflecting and effectively serving the diversity of the Armed Forces community. Service Charities will increase representation of marginalised groups in leadership roles and staff teams. They will expand outreach and service provision to better meet the needs of beneficiaries from diverse cultural, ethnic, and faith backgrounds. With more inclusive policies, practices, and people in place, Service Charities can become exemplars of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Ultimately, SCEIP will empower Service Charities to build public trust, dismantle barriers, amplify unheard voices, and provide culturally-responsive assistance to all who have served.
The overall aim of SCEIP is to accelerate transformational change within Service Charities, enabling them to become more inclusive, culturally sensitive and diverse. SCEIP aims to help Service Charities develop understanding of their social value, be better equipped to make inclusive decisions, informed by their diverse beneficiaries and social impacts, and increase uptake of their service provision by people who are from ethnic and faith minorities in the Armed Forces community.
In order to achieve the project aim, we have defined five objectives:
To develop participatory data-collection tools, such as interactive mobile exhibitions and narrative expositions, to collect high quality, inclusive lived experience and perceptions of inequalities in the provision of support across the services sector;
To establish an evidence base to build better understanding of stakeholder needs (particularly veterans from ethnic and faith minorities) and inspire a more inclusive approach to support programme design, development and provision;
To provide sector-specific tools, such as equality impact analysis, to enable Service Charities to recognise the inequalities in their working practices, their decision-making processes, and their programme outcomes, and empowering them to become more diverse and inclusive and better equipped to meet the needs of culturally-diverse Armed Forces communities;
To provide the framework for Service Charities to sustain evidence-based inclusive practices beyond the project lifetime;
To establish an impact evaluation framework to measure the impact of SCEIP over time. By identifying indicators of impact (including changes in behaviour and attitudes), we will enable Service Charities to monitor and measure their own transformative change as they become more diverse and inclusive.
The Four Steps of SCEIP
SCEIP provides innovative tools to enable Service Charities to recognise the inequalities in their working practices, and their decision-making processes, and empowers them to become more diverse and inclusive and better equipped to meet the needs of a culturally diverse Armed Forces community. SCEIP enables Service Charities to use lived experience data to drive transformational change in four steps (Fig.1). SCEIP’s Theory of Change (Fig.2) illustrates how we anticipate our activities will lead to impact across the Services sector.
Figure 1 SCEIP enables Services Charities to use lived experience data to drive transformational change in four steps
Figure 2 The route to impact: the theory of change for the Service Charities Equality Insights Programme (SCEIP)
Partners & collaborators
 | Babs Harris | |||
 | Sue Liburd |
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