EDI at Settle: progress, learnings, and the work ahead

Every year, we publish the diversity data of our team and Board and progress against our representation targets. Collecting this data helps us to understand how people on our team identify so that we can support and celebrate the diverse people who make Settle what it is. For example, we now know that almost a third of the organisation identifies as LGBTQIA+ and this has reinforced the central place of Pride Month in our organisational calendar. This year (2026), we held a film screening centering Queer voices and experiences, shared our favourite Queer literature including children’s books, and shared events and opportunities for learning across the month. Through these actions, we hope to demonstrate our commitment to creating a culture of belonging for everyone who works at Settle.

Our representation targets help us to hold ourselves accountable for this strategic priority and ensure we are always working towards increasing the diversity of voices and perspectives on our Board and team. As the data shows, we're above our targets for disability, LGBTQIA+ and women and non-binary team members. Over the last year, we increased our representation from minoritised ethnic groups, although we have not yet reached our target. We are also still behind on our target for care-experienced representation. We know that over 80% of the young people we work with are from minoritised ethnic backgrounds and 97% are care-experienced, and we want the Board and team to more closely reflect the community we exist to support. While we have made progress in these areas, there is more for us to do.

Over the past few years, we have been reflecting on this challenge, and in response we have taken a number of actions, for example:

• As a small team, which is not yet as diverse as we want, we have shifted our focus from inclusion to belonging. We recognise that it is everyone's responsibility, whatever their own identity and background, to make sure everyone in the team feels comfortable and confident to bring as much of themselves as they want to into work. In our last staff satisfaction and wellbeing survey, 90% said they feel a sense of belonging at Settle.
• We offer guaranteed interviews for care-experienced job applicants who fulfil the essential criteria for a role we are advertising for. This has increased the number of people with care experience applying and interviewing for posts at Settle, particularly frontline roles.
• We explored using targeted job boards, but these did not have the desired impact. We have instead focused on using our networks, sharing job vacancies in places which may attract applicants from a variety of backgrounds, for example through social media or partnership networks.
• We have continued to develop our commitment to inclusive recruitment practices which include explicitly confronting unconscious biases and rethinking traditional recruitment practice such as every applicant sending in a CV.
• We have historically organised informal external peer mentoring for care-experienced staff and Trustees to ensure they are getting support from someone with shared lived experience and this year we are making this a formal offer.
• Settle’s EDI working group had three coaching sessions with Social Matters to facilitate deeper conversations about diversity and explore challenges and tensions around this work.

We intend to continue having these uncomfortable conversations, seeking external expertise to facilitate confronting and constructive discussions about racial diversity, lived experience, equity and belonging. We will continue to look for ways to support people with experience of the issues faced by the young people on our programme to join the team and Board, and to thrive once they do. We will continue to take our lead from those bringing lived experience to our work.

Dan Jones, our Chief Executive, confirmed the importance of this work for Settle:

Learn more about equity, diversity and inclusion at Settle: