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UHBW NHS

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI)

Workforce Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Strategy

At UHBW, we are committed to inclusion in everything we do. To achieve this, we have developed an ambitious Workforce Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy for 2020-2025, that focuses on supporting our colleagues across all nine protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010.

View the Trust's Workforce Diversity and Inclusion Strategy 2020-2025

Each year we produce an action plan that sits under the strategy. Please view the EDI 2023 - 2024 Action Plan.

This action plan also incorporates our actions, in response to our Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES), Workforce Disability Equality Standard (WDES) and Gender Pay Gap (GPG) report. 

View our Equality Report 2023 

View our WRES Action Plan 2023

Health Objectives

Please click on the objectives below for more information on how we will achieve them.

1. Improve access to, experience of and outcomes from our services +

Targets:

  • Meet the communication needs of our patients with a disability or sensory loss by delivering the Accessible Information Standard (AIS) implementation plan.
  • Strengthen the quality of our translating and interpreting provision through the delivery of the Translation and Interpreting services communications plan and re-procurement of our external supplier together in partnership with Integrated Care System (ICS) providers.
  • Develop a community outreach programme in collaboration with partners in the Voluntary and Community sector to better understand and improve the experience of marginalised communities. 
  • Ensure that patients and carers from diverse groups can share their feedback with the Trust by improving the accessibility of our complaints and routine survey processes. 
  • Create a new website for the Trust with the diverse communication needs of our population in mind, providing an accessible digital platform for health advice and key information on services. 

2. Collaborate with the Integrated Care Partnership to tackle health inequalities +

Targets:

  • Work in partnership with the ICS to ensure an inclusive elective care recovery programme that priorities those groups who experience the poorest health outcomes.
  • Collaborate with our ICS partners on shared health equity priorities informed by the Core20Plus5.
  • Contribute to a system approach to completing the Equality Delivery System (EDS 2022) self-assessment. 

3. Foster organisational capability, creating the foundation to drive forwards our health equity programme +

Targets:

  • Establish a new governance structure for our work on tackling health inequalities that provides reporting on both quality and performance aspects to the Trust Board via appropriate committees.
  • Harness the deployment of the Patient First approach (the Trust’s chosen approach to continuous improvement) as a crucial opportunity to integrate actions throughout the Trust that advance health equity for our patients and communities.
  • Ensure that change is recognised as an opportunity to advance equality for patients by embedding the system Equality and Health Inequalities Impact Assessment (EHIA) tool for key strategies, policies and as a fundamental part of our transformation programme. 
  • Co-design an integrated patient and workforce Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) strategy 2025 – 2030 with our people, patients, carers and communities.
  • Explore opportunities to align EDI resources that sit within the Experience of Care & Inclusion and Organisational Development teams to maximise expertise and add value in our approaches across patient and workforce EDI. 

4. Build the confidence and skills of our people to meet the needs of our diverse patient population +

Targets:

  • Develop a dynamic training programme for EDI, working collaboratively across the patient and workforce agendas, that provides a range of learning opportunities for our people to give them the confidence and skills to meet the needs of our diverse communities. 
  • Encourage a focus on health equity in service delivery by continuing to grow the EDI Action Learning Set which provides a platform for staff in each Trust Division to collaborate, be supportive and share learning with colleagues across UHBW on projects that tackle health inequalities. 
  • Explore how the expertise that exists within staff networks and the EDI advocate programme could support the delivery of our equality objectives for our patients and communities.
  • Provide a range of interactive patient EDI and health equity resources for our workforce via the Trust intranet.

5. Develop patient EDI data and intelligence to inform planning and priority setting +

Targets:

  • Improve the completeness of ethnicity, disability status and communication needs recording on CareFlow (the Trust’s Electronic Patient Record system) to build an accurate profile of our patient population.
  • Continue to develop a suite of patient EDI business intelligence / dashboards that supports monitoring in priority areas (i.e. segmentation of the waiting list by Indices of Multiple Deprivation and Protected Characteristic groups).
  • Triangulate datasets on patient activity, access, experience, safety and outcomes to support priority setting and more informed decision making at Trust and Divisional level.
  • Integrate patient EDI intelligence and insight into routine quality and performance reporting for Divisions, Senior Leadership Team, Quality & Outcomes Committee and Trust Board.
  • Collaborate with partners in the ICS to enable data sharing so that information can be asked once and be available at all "touchpoints" in a patient's journey.

Biannual Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Integrated Performance Report and Action Plan 

Quarterly progress on our action plan is monitored by our Workforce Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Steering Group and reported in our Biannual EDI Reports, which are presented to our Trust Board meetings.

Please view the biannual EDI report April 2023 - September 2023

Please view the biannual EDI report October 2022 - March 2023

Please view the biannual EDI report April 2022 - September 2022 

Please view the biannual EDI report October 2021 - March 2022 

Equality Delivery System (EDS)

The UHBW EDS22 report has been produced and will be available soon.

Please see the NHS England website for more information about the Equality Delivery System.

Call me by my name – Trust-wide Equality Diversity & Inclusion Policy and Awareness Training

All our names deserve to be treated with honour, dignity and respect. Our names are unique identifiers that tell a story – a snapshot of a place and time in history based on traditions, culture or religious beliefs. Often we pay homage to our ancestors and role models by naming our children after them. Therefore, name-calling, assigning uncalled for nicknames and deliberately mispronouncing names is demeaning and morally unacceptable – these are unwelcomed microaggressions and have no part to play in our Trust. This short video is a simple guide on how we can all make a concerted effort to ensure all members of our diverse workforce are allowed to come to work as a ‘whole’ person in an inclusive and welcoming place.

Our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Duties

Under the Equality Act 2010, the Trust has a duty to meet the needs of people with protected characteristics and reduce and eliminate the disadvantage that such groups suffer.

The Equality Act covers the following nine protected characteristics:

  • Age
  • Disability
  • Gender reassignment
  • Pregnancy and maternity
  • Race (includes ethnic or national origins, colour or nationality)
  • Religion or belief (includes no belief)
  • Sex
  • Sexual orientation 
  • Marriage and civil partnership

Public sector organisations such as the NHS have duties referred to as the Public Sector Equality Duty.  It consists of a general duty for public sector organisations to have due regard for the need to:

  • Eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation
  • Advance equality of opportunity between different groups
  • Foster good relations between different groups

Guide to Personal Pronouns

As part of our contribution to PRIDE Month 2021, The Trust has produced a short video guide to using Personal Pronouns 

Celebrating LGBT history month

The Trust marked LGBT history month with a successful and generative mini-conference with over 60 people attending including the exec team with commitment to work with Bristol’s Freedom Youth and  ShoutOut Radio. To celebrate LGBT history month, the Trust also produced an engaging 3-minute video on the key events that shaped the lives of the LGBT community.

Staff networks

The Trust recognises that the passionate and dedicated people who work for us are our greatest asset. Currently, three staff networks meet regularly to offer a safe place for under-represented and disadvantaged individuals/groups to come together and share experiences, discuss and support career and personal development opportunities and also help change organisational culture to be more inclusive.

ABLE+ staff network supports staff and volunteers with physical, sensory or mental impairments to raise awareness of reasonable adjustment solutions to issues encountered at work.

The Race Equality and Inclusion staff network (REIN) is a group of UHBW staff from multi-disciplinary backgrounds across the Trust.

The LGBTQIA+ network is a safe space for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender members of Trust staff and supporters within UHBW to discuss LGBTQIA+ related issues within the organisation.

The Women’s staff network is committed to providing women a forum to discuss the issues that are important to them.

COVID 19 Staff Risk Assessment

Without our amazing and dedicated staff, there would be no NHS service to serve our local populations’ healthcare needs. The COVID pandemic has been and continues to be a challenge for staff to stay safe, but at the same time, provide the same level of professional and compassionate care for patients. To that end, the Trust’s risk assessment process aims to holistically assess all staff’s individual risk and put in place steps to mitigate the risk.

We are pleased to say that by August 2020, we had assessed 91% of our staff with a personal and/or workplace risk assessment. This included 94% of our ethnic minority colleagues who had completed mild, high or very high risk assessment.

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