Statement: Scope Awards

On Thursday 27 October, we hosted our Disability Equality Awards as part of our 70th anniversary celebrations.

Since then, we have received criticism from across the disabled community about the diversity of the event.

We welcome the feedback that we have received through a petition and directly from individuals.

We are sorry we fell short, and we know that there will always be more that we can learn and improve on to make sure our work reflects the experiences of the diversity within the disability community.

James Taylor, Director of Strategy, Impact and Social Change says:

We want to apologise for the lack of Black, Asian and ethnic minority disabled people in our winners, shortlist and judging panel.

We know there is more we need to do to make sure our work champions and reflects the diversity of Britain’s 14.6 million disabled people. We are listening, and we are sorry for the hurt we have caused.

Nomination and shortlisting process

We gathered nominees from entries submitted by the public.

We promoted the event on:

social media
our online community
our membership
and with partners

We received almost 400 entries. We recognise as a new event, we should have done more to establish the Awards and to promote this through grassroots community organisations.

Shortlisting was conducted by Scope colleagues and our external co-production group of disabled people.

Entries were reviewed against set criteria to determine the final shortlist. 5 in each category.

The criteria were:

reach
impact
creativity

Judging process

An independent judging panel selected the majority of the winners on a category by category basis. The panel included disabled talent, ranging from TV stars, journalists, business leaders and well-known activists.

We recognise there were failings in our process and we should have been more explicit about our commitment to diversity in the guidance we gave to judges. We should also have stepped in and acted when we identified the lack of diversity in the winners that were selected.

The winners have all done, and continue to do, incredible things. We’re sorry if our own shortcomings have overshadowed their achievements in any way.

2 categories, Media Moment and Influencer, went to a public vote promoted on Scope’s social media channels.

Paying judges

As many of our judging panel are well paid professionals, we did not feel as a charity that it was appropriate to use public donations to pay people in these circumstances.

However, we have taken on board the feedback we have received about this, and will be reviewing how we engage and compensate individuals as part of any Awards in the future.

Co-production

A group of external disabled people were paid to work with us to co-produce the Awards. This group were involved in designing and decision-making across all aspects of the Awards over many months.

We also spoke to 2 external disabled accessibility consultants who offered their time and expertise for free.

Transparency of our statement

We responded directly to comments about the Awards on social media, addressing the individual points people had raised. Any followers would be able to see our exchanges and access Scope’s statement.

It can be challenging to fit a response into the word count restrictions of certain social media channels. So, we linked to our full statement on a page on our website that allowed us to expand on our position.

We are sorry that our statement was not searchable on our website. We have corrected this mistake and taken steps to make this easier to find on our website. We welcome further feedback and dialogue about the Awards.

Evaluating the Awards

We will be working over the coming weeks to evaluate the Awards and assess how we can improve.

We have learnt important lessons for the future. We will ensure that we don’t make the same mistakes again when organising similar events.

If you would like to share your thoughts and feedback about the Awards, please email awards@scope.org.uk.

Scope’s new Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Strategy

In the new year, we will start delivering our new Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Strategy. This strategy has been co-produced, including with disabled people from outside the organisation who were paid for their input.

We know we need to put much greater focus on addressing the multiple marginalisation faced by members of the disabled community. And we'll work to ensure that this runs through all aspects of our work.

Some of the areas we will be focusing on include:

introducing equality impact assessments for new projects. This will include any future iterations of the Scope Awards, and will help us make more inclusive and open decisions.
talking about intersectional inequalities in our policy, campaigns and key messages
increasing the diversity of our panel, members and storytellers
increasing the diversity of colleagues and volunteers, including at a senior level. We have recently reviewed our recruitment practices with a focus on inclusive recruitment. And we will be offering more targeted development opportunities to marginalised colleagues
amplifying the work of Disabled People’s Organisations (DPOs) and other charities led by marginalised groups. We know we need to do this by giving up power and opportunities
prioritising the experiences of people who face multiple marginalisation in our communications
offering race equality training to all colleagues

If you would like to share your thoughts and feedback about the Awards and the issues discussed in this statement, please email awards@scope.org.uk