Driving Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) in the workplace is a key focus of Connecticut Children’s Office for Community Child Health’s Equity Committee. After working on numerous initiatives over the past three years, our members are excited to debut a new Subcommittee Spotlight blog series that will create channels for dialogue between the Committee, team members, leadership, and the broader institution when it comes to improving a culture of inclusivity and belonging.
In the summer of 2020, team members from Connecticut Children’s Office for Community Child Health (the Office) requested department leadership create a safe space to come together in response to the murder of George Floyd and discuss the presence and implications of institutional racism. In response, Office leadership held a series of virtual forums, where team members voiced a vested interest in addressing existing problems and increasing our unified focus on equity. Informed by the recommendations voiced during these sessions, Office leadership worked with team members to identify an avenue for a grassroots movement to influence departmental change and advance equity within our workplace culture and through our community-facing programmatic work.
As a result of that collaboration, the initiative became known as Pathways to Action (PTA), and the Equity Committee was formed to lead the work.
The Role of the Equity Committee
The Equity Committee consists of 13 team members from four of the Office’s community-facing programs and three departments across Connecticut Children’s. Our mission is as follows:
1. Equity will serve as the guiding principle in all programmatic efforts carried out by the Office; and
2. Build a more inclusive and respectful workplace community that prioritizes and celebrates the well-being, individuality, and sense of belonging of all team members.
The Equity Committee leverages a subcommittee structure to tackle a broad range of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) activities. To ensure the focus of our DEI work remains driven by team member priorities, the Equity Committee uses annual Office Culture Surveys to collect feedback, ideas, and concerns from team members within the Office. This feedback guides the development of our annual goals. Every year, each subcommittee identifies one to three goals to champion as part of our annual action plan.
One major theme we heard in the most recent Office Culture Survey was a desire for increased visibility of the work taking place through Pathways to Action. As a result, our Communications Subcommittee is pleased to announce the official launch of our Pathways to Action: Subcommittee Spotlight Series. Beginning with this blog, we will highlight a different subcommittee every other month to elevate the work they are driving forth. We hope you enjoy reading the spotlights and learning more about our work.
Subcommittee Spotlight: Communications
Q: What is the mission and vision of the Communications Subcommittee?
A: The main purpose of the Equity Committee's Communications Subcommittee is to create channels for dialogue between the Committee, team members, leadership, and the broader institution when it comes to improving a culture of inclusivity and belonging.
The Communications Subcommittee aims to raise the visibility of the Equity Committee, create opportunities for team members to contribute to the work, and help facilitate honest, and at times difficult, DEI conversations needed to enact change.
Q: What impact do you hope the Communications Subcommittee has on the Office for Community Child Health and Connecticut Children’s as a whole?
A: We hope that because of our work, team members are more aware of how the efforts carried forth by the Equity Committee are driving value for our department and Connecticut Children’s more broadly. We also want all team members to feel that their opinions regarding workplace belonging and inclusion in our department are heard and prioritized. Our goal is to partner with other Connecticut Children’s departments that are engaged in similar work as together we can make a greater impact. Additionally, we also hope to partner with those who are leading our organization’s DEI work to ensure that our efforts align with our organization’s DEI strategy.
Q: What is something the Communications Subcommittee is working on right now that you are excited about?
A: We are excited to be launching this “Subcommittee Spotlight” series to both increase awareness of the good work that the Equity Committee is driving forward and promote a space for broader knowledge-sharing of best practices and lessons learned.
Q: How can people outside Connecticut Children’s engage with the Equity Committee?
A: DEI work is ever-evolving and we're always eager to connect with other organizations who share our mission of creating a culture of belonging for our team members and centering equity in our community-oriented work. If you’d like to connect with our team and talk through challenges and strategies for driving forth impactful DEI work, please contact our Office Equity Committee co-chairs, sdivietro [at] connecticutchildrens.org (Susie DiVietro) and LDominique [at] connecticutchildrens.org (Lauren Dominique). We would also be thrilled to highlight your DEI work with our Office network of community-oriented programs. Please inform us of any webinars or resources that would be impactful to Connecticut Children's!
Q: What resources would you like to make known to others?
A: As part of our work, we like to make informative resources available to people inside and outside our organization to further our collective DEI awareness. One resource that we recently came across was published in the CT Mirror and highlights a report on the widening “diversity gap” between students and teachers of color. The report emphasizes the significance of students having the opportunity to interact with and learn from individuals who come from diverse racial backgrounds. It identifies this widening gap as a risk factor that could impact children's abilities to one day work collaboratively with people who have different life experiences and appearances. The author explores the advantages of children learning from racially diverse educators, and the path forward for closing the gap, according to the president of the Connecticut Education Association. Though the article is focused on relationships between teachers and students, the advantages of racially diverse groups working with and learning from one another is a concept with broad application.