Supporting Equality and Diversity in the NHS
This NHS England video outlines how the NHS is supporting Equality and Diversity.
Equality and Diversity ensures we commission services fairly and that no community or group is left behind when we make commissioning decisions on behalf of our population, especially in relation to meeting the unprecedented challenges the NHS face, as outlined in the ‘NHS Long Term Plan’.
We will continue to work internally, and in partnership with our providers, community and voluntary sector organisations, and other key stakeholders to ensure that we advance equality of opportunity and strive to meet our exacting requirements of the Equality Act 2010
The Equality Act 2010 requires us to meet our Public Sector Equality Duty across a range of protected groups including age, disability, race, sex, sexual orientation, religion/belief, gender reassignment, marital/civil partnership status and pregnancy/maternity status.
We are required to prepare and publish Equality Objectives and to meet our Specific Duties as outlined in the Equality Act 2010. Our plan is specific and measurable and aims to address issues associated with access and outcomes across people who share protected characteristics. The CCG understands that at sometimes in our lives we may face barriers in relation to accessing health services or experience different outcomes. NHS St Helens CCG want to make a big difference to health outcomes across our diverse communities and our Equality Objectives will support us to do this.
Our equality objectives are:
To help us set our Equality Objectives we used NHS Equality Delivery Systems self-assessment (EDS 2).
Please see our Annual Equality Report and Equality Objective Plan including our Equality Delivery Systems 2 Summary Report. The Equality Delivery System for the NHS – EDS2, is a tool designed to help NHS organisations, in partnership with local stakeholders, to review and improve their performance for people with characteristics protected by the Equality Act 2010, and to support them in meeting the Public Sector Equality Duty.
If you wish to contact the CCG on a matter relating to equality and diversity please contact:
Angela Delea, Associate Director Corporate Governance
angela.delea2@sthelensccg.nhs.uk
Andy Woods, Senior Governance Manager (Equality & Inclusion)
For further Equality Information about Equality and Diversity, visit the Equality and Human Rights Commission website.
NHS Workforce Race Equality Standards (WRES)
All NHS organisations are required to demonstrate how they are addressing race equality issues in a range of staffing areas. The nine-point Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES) metric helps organisations to achieve this.
Four of the metrics are specifically on workforce data and four are based on data derived from the national NHS Staff Survey indicators. The staff survey information will highlight any differences between the experience and treatment of white and BME staff in the NHS. The final metric requires organisations to ensure that their Boards are broadly representative of the communities they serve.
You can download NHS St Helens CCG's WRES Report for 2020/21 here, and a copy of the CCG's Workforce Equality Action Plan here.
You can access the following link to find out more about the NHS WRES by clicking here.
St Helens CCG Governing Body Pledges
The CCG Governing Body has made nine pledges to address the concerns and needs of our BAME employees and communities, and reduce inequalities.
Read more about these here