About our organisation

We provide a range of high quality specialist mental health, learning disability and neurodiversity services for the people of Devon, the wider South West region and nationally.

We are passionate about promoting good mental health and wellbeing. We strive to use the expertise and resources within our organisation, and through our partnerships, to deliver high quality services that are safe and focused on people's recovery.

Our passion and commitment to achieve this shapes our vision, mission and strategy. Our staff are pivotal in everything we do and we are committed to involving them fully in the development of the Trust and our services.

Our aim is to deliver consistently high quality, recovery-focused care and treatment and to ensure our services are driven by the voices of the people who use them.

We are an equal opportunities employer and aim to challenge discrimination and stigma and champion recovery, inclusion and wellbeing. We also strive for mental health and learning disability services to be understood and valued in the same way as physical health services.  

We have a income in excess of £206m a year and employ around 3,600 staff. During the course of a year we receive around 74,000 referrals and we are supporting around 26,000 people every month.

Corporate information

The Race Equality Code

The Race Equality Code is a comprehensive accountability framework based on four key principles, designed to address the specific challenge of How to deal with race inequality in the Boardroom and Senior Leadership Team. It draws on best practice in addressing organisational challenges through its unique drivers to create sustainable, lasting, and meaningful transformational change.

The Code provides organisations with the opportunity to address race inequality at Board and senior leadership levels through tangible actions. It includes a review of the structures, systems, and processes across the organisation through an equality lens, and aims for improvement based on addressing identified inequalities.

We were an early adopter of the Race Equality Code and, in 2023, successfully achieved the Quality Watermark. A Race Action Plan was provided to the Trust alongside the Watermark, and we continue to ensure that all actions within the Race Equality Code are considered and implemented.

The four key principles of the Race Equality Code are:

Reporting - A clear commitment to be transparent to all stakeholders through the disclosure of required, concise and current information on the progress and impact of RACE initiatives across the organisation. Openness and transparency will be actively pursued and valued in order to create the right environment for change.

Action - A list of the measurable actions and outcomes that contribute to and enable a shift in the organisation’s approach to be delivering positive and sustainable change in race equity and equality. Without a set of targets and detailed plans for their achievement, real change will not happen, and organisations will not be accountable.

Composition - A set of key indicators that create tangible differences in race diversity across all levels of the organisation. The narrative around what is acceptable will need to change through dialogue and data, and this will lead to challenging conversations leading to necessary decisions which the organisation is committed to making.

Education - A robust organisational framework that develops the ethical, moral, social and business reasoning for race diversity at all levels of the organisation. This will be underpinned by inclusive and embedded programmes of continuous professional development (using the Principles) through which perspectives and prejudices will need to be challenged, and systemic and institutional practices acknowledged.

Further information can be found on The Race Code website.