IEDP Standards and Products Working Group

The Institute has established a Standards and Products Working Group to define and develop standards in working practices and qualifications for equality, diversity and human rights practitioners.

Practitioners work in a relatively new and unstructured profession, often without formal qualifications in equality, diversity and human rights. It is one of the key reasons why practitioners are under-valued by many organisations. It also creates difficulties from a business perspective since there are no widely recognised standards for individuals, teams or companies to use for quality assurance.

A core objective of the Institute is to develop, promote, maintain and regulate national practice and professional standards in the field of equality, diversity and human rights. To meet this objective, the Board has set two main task areas for the working group.

Area 1: Standards

The working group is to do the following:

• survey and evaluate existing standards in equality, diversity and human rights practice
• use information from the existing standards, qualifications and professional experience to describe the core knowledge, skills and values required to deliver good practice in equality, diversity and human rights practice
• translate these competencies and qualities into standards for practitioners and trainers
• devise an assessment framework for use by the Institute to accredit members
• suggest other ways in which the Institute can use these standards to  improve quality assurance in the profession

Area 2: Qualifications

The working group is to do the following:

• survey and evaluate existing qualifications in equality, diversity and human rights
• suggest ways that prior learning could be recognised in any qualification / assessment procedure
• suggest new qualifications and products that may be needed in future and that IEPD could take an active role in developing

Consultation with IEDP members

The working group is drawing up draft documentation for agreement by the Board. Once agreed, the draft will go out for consultation with all members of the Institute.

The Board aims to have documentation ready for agreement at the Annual General Meeting to be held in 2010.

Members of the group
                                                                                                                                                                                        Paul Carswell, Tehmina Hammad, Kate Hinton, Julia Kaya, Joanna Rowland-Stuart, Dipen Rajyaguru and Steve Rouse. The group is currently chaired by Kate Hinton.