We are committed to ensuring that everything we do is accessible and inclusive to diverse communities. We oppose discrimination in all its forms and welcome everybody, particularly those underrepresented on our courses and at our events.

We recognise that there is more work we need to do in this area, and below we set out our plan to improve, and monitor our progress.

As stated in our Values…

“We acknowledge the effects of the multiple and complex challenges of the times we live in. We seek to offer wise and kind responses to the injustice, discrimination and social and economic inequality that excludes or marginalises communities and individuals. We aim to make everything we do as widely accessible as possible and to fully include diverse communities in the populations we serve.”

To strive towards this, we will work together in ways that are collaborative, respectful and which welcome suggestions representing different opinions and approaches. We hope this work will help us make our courses and events more accessible and inclusive to all who can benefit from them.

As a step in this direction, we set out below some actions we plan to implement in 2026.

Plan 2026

1. We will update our communications so that our mindfulness and compassion courses, teacher training and events are inclusive, accessible and welcoming to all people from diverse communities.
2. We will keep our fees as accessible as we can while covering our costs. Where possible we will offer price reductions for our courses and events for people who would otherwise struggle to pay our fees in full.
3. We will offer reduced cost places where possible on our teacher training programmes to people who would otherwise be unable to pay our full fees.
4. We will proactively reach out to communities who cannot easily access what we offer due to stigma, disadvantage or discrimination.
5. We will collect data on protected and other important characteristics on all our courses, trainings and events so that we can continually monitor representation across all we do. We will use this information to make explicit when we advertise our trainings, courses and events that we particularly welcome applications from people from the groups who are underrepresented according to our data.
6. We will ask people attending our courses, trainings and events about their experiences of accessibility and inclusion on the course/training/event they have attended and respond to feedback.
7. We will work alongside people with lived experience from under-served and under-represented communities to co-produce or consult on and trial solutions to improve representation and experiences of our courses, trainings and events, including but not limited to offering bespoke groups where deemed necessary. This will include offering and co-producing/consulting on mindfulness and compassion courses that are adapted or designed for populations for whom our standard offers are not accessible, such as (but not limited to) refugees, people of the global majority, neurodivergent people and people with dementia.
8. We will strive to ensure all our activities are informed by people with appropriate lived experience. This will include growing the SMC Advocates Group, including increasing diversity within the group.

If you have any suggestions of how we can improve, we’d love to hear from you. Please e-mail us at spft.smc@nhs.net.