West Suffolk is increasingly becoming a more and more diverse place to live and work, and this trend is set to continue over the coming years, as our communities are constantly changing. This is of course to be celebrated, as all of our diverse communities enrich life in West Suffolk. However, a constantly changing demographic brings with it a number of challenges for the NHS West Suffolk Clinical Commissioning Group (WSCCG).
The NHS is available to all, free at the point of delivery.
WSCCG is committed to buying fair, accessible, appropriate and sensitive health services for all of our communities. We are also committed to being a fair, inclusive and diverse employer.
To support this commitment, we have developed the WSCCG Equality and Diversity Strategy 2012- 2015. The strategy is currently under review with a system wide approach.
Our continuing commitment Equality Impact assessments can be downloaded here.
Equality objectives
WSCCG has been reviewing its performance on equality and diversity across the organisation. There have been two events held to measure how the CCG is performing against equality and diversity under the Equality Delivery System 2 (EDS2). These events helped us grade performance across all 18 outcomes of the NHS Equality Delivery System to help us highlight areas of strength and weakness across the organisation.– you can view the full EDS2 document by clicking here.
The CCG developed equality objectives to focus on:
Objective 1
Patients and carers experience joined-up healthcare, ensuring access to the right services at the right time.
Score: Achieving
Partnership working in several areas is paying dividends. The Connect project now has teams working in 12 areas of the county across the whole of Suffolk. The pilot scheme, which began in Sudbury in 2015/16, has seen police, social care and healthcare teams finding new ways to work together so that patients and carers get simpler access to care. More can be found here: www.connectsuffolk.org.uk
The Early Intervention Team at WSFT is another example of good partnership working. This team is made up of social workers, health professionals and the voluntary sector and aims to treat people in their own homes to avoid them having an unnecessary hospital stay.
Work on the local health and care plans are supporting this outcome, promoting collaboration not competition.
Objective 2
The CCG will improve use of equality data and information about west Suffolk’s diverse population and communities to inform its work.
Score: Developing
The CCG has a clear idea of which populations live and work in our area. Economic migrants are a key focus for engagement in our Communications and Engagement Strategy. All GP practices have been given IT support tools to enable them to deliver services in line with the Information Access Standard.
All of the CCG’s published materials are available to order in braille and ‘easy read’ (large print) on request. Visitors to our website can enlarge print, change language and change colour schemes for ease of reading.
We use a translation policy.
Objective 3
The CCG will improve the way that the governing body and executive can learn from the healthcare experiences of diverse and marginalised individuals, groups and carers.
Score: Developing
Patient stories are heard at every Governing Body meeting. One of the stories during 2016/17 came from a mental health service user who talked about her experience of autism services, which have helped inform some of the Transforming Care work being led by the Chief Nursing Officer.
Work continues to provide support for the health and emotional wellbeing of young people. A strategy has been co-produced using direct input from children and young people and has led to the development of a 24/7 helpline. The voluntary sector has also supported this piece of work, and attracted further funding to improve help for young people.
Objective 4
Senior leaders and other managers will provide leadership, support and motivation for their staff to uphold the CCG’s value of equality of opportunity to improve the health of those most in need.
Score: Achieving
All staff completed equality and diversity training and have equality and diversity objectives in their Personal Development Plans during 2016/17.
For more information, email getinvolved@westsuffolkccg.nhs.uk or call 01284 774 813.
NHS Equality Delivery System
We have adopted the NHS Equality Delivery System (EDS) to ensure we meet and exceed our requirements under the public sector equality duty. We will use the EDS to:
- Maintain good equalities and diversity practice throughout the work of the organisation – both as a commissioner of services and as an employer
- Using existing information, identify areas in which equalities needs to be addressed
- Where information is missing, identify actions to gather relevant information
- Develop ways to address known inequalities
- Priorities our equality objectives
More information on the EDS is available here.
Workforce Ethnicity Information
Each year we publish ethnicity information about our staff. Please see the reports below for the latest information:
- NHS Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES) 2020
- Workforce Ethnicity Information 2018
- Workforce Ethnicity Information 2017
- Workforce Ethnicity Information 2016
- Workforce Ethnicity Information 2015
NHS Equality Delivery System
We have adopted the NHS Equality Delivery System (EDS) to ensure we meet and exceed our requirements under the public sector equality duty. We will use the EDS to:
- Maintain good equalities and diversity practice throughout the work of the organisation – both as a commissioner of services and as an employer
- Using existing information, identify areas in which equalities needs to be addressed
- Where information is missing, identify actions to gather relevant information
- Develop ways to address known inequalities
- Priorities our equality objectives
More information on the EDS is available here.
Equality analysis
A key part of having due regard to the three main aims of the general equality duty is to ensure that the impact on equality is taken into account at the early stages of the CCG’s policy development and review. West Suffolk CCG is committed to embedding equality analysis into its processes to ensure our policies, practices and decisions further the aims of the equality duty.
Equality analysis should start early in the policy or service development process, or at the early stages of a review. Download our Tool kit for Equality analysis template .
Equality Act 2010
The Equality Act 2010 was introduced in October 2010 to bring together and strengthen all previous anti-discrimination law. The Equality Act protects people with the following nine ‘protected characteristics’ from discrimination:
- Age
- Disabilitiy
- Gender reassignment
- Marriage and civil partnership
- Pregnancy and maternity
- Race
- Religion and belief
- Sex
- Sexual orientation
Public sector equality duty
A major part of the Act is the public sector equality duty. There are two parts to the public sector equality duty: the general equality duty and the specific duties.
The general equality duty requires public bodies in the course of developing policies and delivering services, to have due regard to the need to:
- Eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation and other conduct prohibited by the Act
- Advance equality of opportunity between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not
- Foster good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not
The term ‘having due regard’ means:
Removing or minimising disadvantages suffered by people due to their protected characteristics
- Taking steps to meet the needs of people from protected characteristics where these are different from the needs of other people
- Encouraging people from protected groups to participate in public life or in other activities where their participation is disproportionately low
The specific duties have been designed to help public bodies meet the requirements of the general equality duty. With that in mind, NHS West Suffolk CCG will:
- Publish equality information every year to demonstrate our compliance with the general equality duty: including equality information on our communities and our staff
- Prepare and publish one or more equality objectives every four years, to prioritise our work on equality and diversity
