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The Trust has this week joined the celebrations which marked 75 years of the Windrush Generation.

On 22 June 1948, over 1,000 people arrived in the UK from the West Indies on board the MV Empire Windrush. Known as the ‘Windrush Generation’, they helped rebuild the nation following the Second World War, where families and descendants made immeasurable contributions to public services and the NHS.

Windrush Day aims to encourage communities across the country to celebrate the contribution of the Windrush Generation and their descendants. The Trust is proud to join communities across the country in recognising and honouring the enormous contribution of those who arrived at Tilbury Docks some 75 years ago.

Many of the passengers on board MV Empire Windrush took up roles in the NHS, which had launched just 2 weeks later.

It has not been an easy journey for the early black and minority ethnic colleagues in the NHS, and in British society. Faced with racism, discrimination and public outcry, they were not always welcome.

Today, ethnic minority colleagues make up almost a quarter of the NHS workforce and 42% of medical staff.

Dean Harvey says growing up in the UK in the 60s and 70s was tough for a mixed heritage boy of Jamaican and Irish ancestry raised in the care system.

But he, like many others, found his true belonging with the NHS, where he proudly continues to work today as an associate non-executive director (inclusion and diversity) for the Trust.

He says: “I was looking for something and where I found black and brown faces was in my local hospital. People that looked like me doing regular professional jobs and being respected as team members, colleagues, doctors and nurses. Strangers to role models in a young man’s heart. I wish I could thank them all personally now.

“They had such an influence on me, unknowingly giving me a sense of self value that I was missing at the time and increasing my sense of self, a sense of potential.;

“I feel so proud to know that people of Caribbean heritage, despite the often seemingly insurmountable struggles, ;are a deep part of the amazing cultural heritage of the NHS which is in turn part of the fabric of our society.”

As part of our plans for the NHS 75 birthday celebrations, the Trust is celebrating the same anniversary of Windrush and diversity of the NHS workforce. From the Windrush generation of 1948, the south Asian arrivals in the 1960s and 70s, to today’s workforce which currently represents over 200 nationalities.

Dean adds: “Today is a day of joy for so many reasons, Windrush 75 years, NHS 75 years. And for me currently honoured to be playing my small NHS part. Here in Cornwall today every meeting I have attended, my colleagues have raised this event with pride. Not my black colleagues or my white colleagues, just my colleagues.

“This is a day and time earnt for me and us by my forerunners and I feel very blessed to play my small part in the ongoing story of an amazing institution. My NHS, our NHS. I am part of the Windrush generations and the NHS family ongoing story.”