Conference Awareness, Respect and Ethics Board (CARE board)
BCME conferences are a space where all participants are allowed to express their views, and to challenge the views of others. At the same time, there is no place for any form of discrimination, vilification, abuse, or harassment. Despite best intentions, situations of conflict between conference participants may arise. To support participants in such situations, a Conference Awareness, Respect and Ethics Board (CARE board) has been assigned to help resolve disputes.
CARE board:
Tracy Helliwell (Friday)
Vinay Kathotia (both days)
Viv Lloyd (both days)
Lynne McClure (both days)
Peter Lacey (Saturday)
The role of the CARE Board
The CARE Board exists to help ensure that the conference remains a welcoming, respectful and professionally supportive environment for everyone involved.
Board members are experienced colleagues who can offer a calm, confidential point of contact when someone is concerned about an interaction or about the way they, or another participant, are being treated. The role is primarily one of listening, supporting and helping people find a constructive way forward.
What the CARE Board can help with
Being a confidential point of contact
Participants may approach a CARE Board member if they have experienced, witnessed or are concerned about behaviour that has left someone feeling uncomfortable. Sometimes simply having an experienced and impartial person with whom to talk can be helpful.
Supporting respectful professional relationships
Professional and academic communities should be places where people can disagree, sometimes strongly. The CARE Board is not there to prevent robust discussion or differences of opinion, but to help when disagreement becomes personal, confrontational or otherwise inconsistent with the respectful treatment of colleagues.
Helping to de-escalate difficult situations
Where appropriate, a CARE Board member may help those involved to clarify what has happened, consider different perspectives and identify a constructive next step. This might involve an informal conversation, helping someone decide how they would like to respond, or facilitating a conversation between colleagues where all concerned are comfortable with this.
Looking out for colleagues
There may be occasions when a person's behaviour gives rise to concern for their own wellbeing as well as its impact on others. The CARE Board should approach such situations with discretion, dignity and compassion, while remaining attentive to the effect of the behaviour on other participants.
The boundaries of the role
The CARE Board is not responsible for the organisation or management of the conference or the organising groups. Matters such as committee structures, roles, responsibilities, administrative decisions and ordinary disagreements about how the organisation should operate should continue to be dealt with through the appropriate organisational arrangements.
Nor is the CARE Board a disciplinary panel or a clinical service. Members are not expected to diagnose the reasons for someone's behaviour, determine who is "right" in a dispute, or resolve every difficulty brought to them.
The Board's role is to listen, support, encourage respectful communication and, where necessary, help identify an appropriate route for further action.
In practice
CARE Board members should aim to:
- listen without rushing to judgement;
- treat everyone involved with dignity and respect;
- focus on behaviour and its impact rather than making assumptions about people's motives or circumstances;
- maintain confidentiality as far as reasonably possible, while being clear that serious safeguarding or welfare concerns may need to be shared appropriately;
- avoid taking sides or becoming drawn into wider organisational disputes;
- seek another CARE Board member's perspective where a situation is particularly difficult or sensitive; and
- remember that supporting the person whose behaviour is causing concern and supporting those affected by that behaviour are not mutually exclusive.
The aim is not to remove disagreement from the conference. It is to help sustain a professional community in which people can disagree without diminishing one another, and in which someone experiencing difficulty knows that there is a trusted colleague they can turn to.
