Strategic Framework Overview
The Strategic Framework outlines the vision, goals, strategies, objectives, and guiding principle of The Brookville Center for Children’s Services (BCCS) commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion both within the organization and in our intersections and interactions with our students, staff, employees, and people and organizations outside of BCCS. It also provides a clear structure for focusing our actions and ensuring they are meaningful, targeted, and lead to sustained, deep, and powerful change. Altogether, it charts a course for building a diverse, equitable, and inclusive organization at BCCS.
The framework is grounded in BCCS’ mission and core values. Our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) strategy work reaffirms that our mission and core values are foundational to who we are and continues to represent who we want to be as an organization, even as we put greater emphasis on our work in DEI.
The framework itself is defined by the following key components illustrated in the pages that follow. Together, these components provide the necessary strategic foundation for the DEI Action Plan’s specific actions and next steps:
- Vision for Transformative Impact: This is our shared understanding of how this work integrates with our organization’s core values and mission to create long-lasting change.
- Guiding Principles: These key ideas guide how we will accomplish our work together and codify the spirit of DEI related work at BCCS.
- Overarching DEI Goal To become a premier, culturally competent, educational institution and residential services provider of choice for partners, students, job candidates, and staff who value diversity, equity, and inclusion.
- Areas of Focus: To guide our actions, these thematic areas of emphasis were developed based on organization surveys and an organizational assessment.
- Strategies and Objectives: These specific directional strategies, aligned with our focus areas, provide a roadmap for targeted actions, and intended outcomes staged over time.
Core Values
At Citizens, we believe:
Click here to learn more about Core Values.
Words to Know
Diversity
Recognizing all dimensions of human differences. In the broadest sense, diversity refers to the inclusion of all historically marginalized people regardless of racial and ethnic background, disability, gender and gender identity, sexuality, nationality, religious beliefs, age, and socioeconomic status among others.
Equality
Guaranteeing identical distribution of resources regardless of the above-mentioned differences. Equality focuses on perceived fairness and is different from equity.
Equity
Recognizes that all people do not start from the same place and focuses on adjusting imbalances, giving each person what they need to succeed. Imbalances focus on access, opportunity, and support.
Inclusion
The practice of creating spaces, in and outside an organization, that celebrate and recognize the value of diversity. Of great importance is including people who have historically been excluded at all levels of the organization (representation) and ensuring that everyone can achieve their full potential regardless of difference.
Click here to learn more words to know.
Vision for Transformative Impact
A demonstrated and measurable commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion is an indivisible pillar of the values of BCCS and the way we deliver upon our mission.
This is our shared understanding of how this work integrates with our organization’s core values and mission to create long-lasting change.
Guiding Principles
These key ideas will guide how we will accomplish our DEI goals as an organization and help set the tone of our future DEI work.
Inclusive and Engaging – Efforts should include representation of BIPOC experiences, roles, and responsibilities across BCCS and work to ensure that feasible participation and engagement are available to everyone.
Evolutionary and Ongoing –A transformative DEI program will take time, intentional everyday commitment, and requires ongoing investment to support incremental, measured, and sustained change.
Transparent, Accountable, and Measurable – Management must openly share progress against the plan. The organization will transparently collect and share key data that monitors progress using specific, meaningful metrics, and must adjust when needed to address obstacles.
Evidence-Based and Driven by Best Practice – The DEI program will be rooted in organizational needs and disparities identified in qualitative and quantitative data. Solutions will apply historically contextualized approaches to building diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Centered and Equity-Focused – Efforts, actions, and decision-making should include those who are most affected by inequities, and efforts should prioritize equity over equality.
Transformational and Bold – Our work in this area will require a real focus on racial, ethnic, and cultural differences instead of supporting surface-level efforts. BCCS recognizes that true transformation often creates discomfort for many people, resistance from some, and is prepared to respond to this without diminishing the plan.
Overarching DEI Goal
To become a premier, culturally competent, educational institution and residential provider of choice for partners, students, job candidates, and staff who value diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Areas of Focus
To enact measurable change over time, our work in DEI will focus on growing the areas of strength and improving in the areas of deficit identified in our needs assessment and the DEI strategic process.
Click here to learn more about Areas of Focus.
DEI Strategies and Objectives
To move from intent into action and outcomes, we must develop, implement, measure, and sustain an Action Plan that aligns with our areas of focus.
Click here to learn more about DEI Strategies and Objectives.
Action Plan Overview
The Action Plan outlines the activities that support the strategies and objectives set in the Strategic Framework. These actions were developed based on the recommendations of the DEI Strategy Committee and our Diversity Consultant. The final actions represent the priorities based on input by the Diversity Steering Committee, various staff members and teams.
Listing intended actions is only the first step in achieving our DEI goals. To ensure true success, our planned actions will need:
- A Realistic and Shared Timeline
- Objective Measures of Progress and Success
- Appropriate Resources and Governance
- Access & Accessibility to Information & Technology
- Shared Accountability and Measurement
Click here for the Action Plan Overview.
