Equality and Diversity Statement – equality objectives 2012/13

Foreword by the Chief Executive

NHS South of England officially came into being on Monday 3 October 2011, joining three Strategic Health Authorities, NHS South Central, NHS South East Coast and NHS South West as a single cluster.

The 10 Strategic Health Authorities in England have formed four clusters for a transitional period. This will ensure that the organisations can continue to improve performance and deliver the NHS reforms. From 31 March 2013, the Strategic Health Authorities will be succeeded by a new NHS Commissioning Board, working with local Clinical Commissioning Groups.

Sir Ian Carruthers OBE: “This is an exciting phase for the NHS. The number one priority is to keep the focus on improving the quality of care and NHS services for the benefit of the 13.4 million people in the South of England, which covers a geographical area from Cornwall in the west, to Kent in the east and north to Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire. NHS South of England is committed to tackling discrimination of any kind, promoting equality and diversity, protecting and promoting human rights. These principles are at the very heart of the NHS, underpinning the NHS constitution and every single person who works in the NHS has a role to play in achieving them. Recognising diversity means understanding how people’s differences and similarities can be mobilised for the benefit of the individual, the organisation and society as a whole. Different groups of people offer different viewpoints, cultural knowledge and skills that can improve the NHS’ ability to deliver services that meet people’s needs. Workforce and delivery excellence can only be achieved and sustained by ensuring that we recruit and develop the very best people for every job, regardless of their background or the protected characteristics they have.”

Chief Executive
Sir Ian Carruthers OBE

Equality Act 2010: progress across South of England

On the 6th April 2011 the Equality Act came into effect. This Act combined all duties on public bodies, originally found in a number of previous statutes, into one single duty. It also extended the application of the duties to new protected characteristics. Characteristics covered by the duty include:

• age;
• sexual orientation;
• gender reassignment;
• sex;
• pregnancy and maternity;
• race;
• religion or belief;
• disabled people
• marriage and civil partnership.

The General Duty sets out key elements that all public authorities must consider, or have due regard to, when carrying out its functions, which are:

Eliminate discrimination, harassment and victimisation and any other conduct that is prohibited by or under the Act.

Advance equality of opportunity between people who share a relevant protected characteristic and people who do not share it.

Foster good relations between people who share a relevant protected characteristic and those who do not share it.

The Equality Act 2010 is supported by specific duties, set out in regulations which came into force on 10 September 2011. The specific duties require public bodies to publish relevant and proportionate information demonstrating their compliance with the Equality Duty; and to set themselves specific, measurable equality objectives.

Public bodies are required to publish information to demonstrate their compliance with the Equality Duty, at least annually; and set equality objectives, at least every four years.

Existing accountability arrangements of Primary Care Trust Clusters and Strategic Health Authority clusters will remain in place for the whole of 2012/13 and the NHS Operating Framework sets out clear performance expectations to support delivery. Whilst there is a consolidation of management capacity, with a single executive team managing the cluster, the three Strategic Health Authorities in the South of England will be retained as statutory organisations.

In developing an Equality and Diversity strategy for the clustered South of England we will ensure there is consolidation and collaboration of existing equality and diversity activity to maximise shared capacity and resources, and also, that each Strategic Health Authority fulfils its own statutory responsibility.

Further to the Chief Executive’s report to the Board (January 2012) the three statutory SHAs published information and evidence to demonstrate compliance with the Equality Duty that would be used to set equality objectives [Insert links to separate evidence]. The legal requirement for these is at least every four years, but the proposal for the South of England SHA Cluster is to set high level objectives that operate during the transition and through to the new system.

To that end, NHS South of England has reviewed the information, data, feedback from engagement activity and evidence across the three SHAs to determine high level objectives that will deliver real outcomes for the patients and staff across the clustered region.

Equality objectives

Having due regard means consciously thinking about the three aims of the Equality Duty as part of the process of decision-making. This means that consideration of the impact on equality issues must influence our decisions reached as a public body, such as how we act as an employer; how we develop, evaluate and review policy; how we design, deliver and evaluate services, and how we commission and procure from others.

To ensure due regard to equalities is demonstrated during the transition to the new structure the Board approved the following over-arching high level Equality Objectives:

• performance manage PCT clusters in terms of their statutory equality duties and implementation of the NHS Equality Delivery System through to March 2013 through the South of England Equality Dashboard and Single Conversation;
• work with emerging systems to build culturally responsive JSNAs that meet the needs of the population across all protected characteristics;
• development of CCG commissioning web toolkit; to include guidance on culturally sensitive JSNAs, supporting the authorisation process.

To ensure that the SHAs continue to be legally compliant with the Equality Act 2011 and able to lead, monitor, manage and support local organisations through the transition with credibility, the Clustered SHA needs to embed equality and diversity in all transition plans. Our key focus for the remaining time we have left will be to:

• comply with the Equality Act and public duties as separate SHAs;
• ensure local organisations understand their responsibilities under the Equality Act and migrate from current single equality schemes to publishing Equality Objectives;
• lead the implementation of the Equality Delivery System across the region;
• work with emerging Commissioning Consortia to understand their responsibilities under the Equality Act;
• continue to monitor the performance of local organisations through transition to the new system;
• ensure that proposals to the Board for decision are accompanied by an Analysis of the Impact on Equality;
• the South of England Equality Governance Group is established to ensure there is appropriate equality governance across all directorate functions.

Next steps

Although the separate SHAs had engagement strategies in place, the timing of the clustering of SHAs means we will need to undertake further engagement work through the transition to determine meaningful equality objectives with tangible outcomes for the whole of the South of England.

This will include an analysis of the Integrated Public Health Need and Performance in NHS South of England Report.

Subject to more detailed analysis and engagement with stakeholders, we propose to drill down to more specific equality objectives across the protected characteristics that will:

• leave a legacy to ensure the new system will continue the work to improve health outcomes for the South of England;
• build on previous and existing leadership equality programmes to identify leadership opportunities through the transition for the regional workforce;
• support people with protected characteristics by conducting an equality analysis at key stages of the implementation of workforce transition plans;
• set equality objectives across the transition of core functions to the new systems. Specifically commissioning, HR, workforce and public health.

Contact details:

Gill Mayo, Head of Inclusion
gillian.mayo@southeastcoast.nhs.uk

Trish Pashley, Equality and Diversity Manager East
Trish.pashley@southeastcoast.nhs.uk

Michail Sanidas, Equality and Human Rights Manager West
michail.sanidas@southwest.nhs.uk

Anjum Gray, Equality and Diversity Manager Central
anjum.gray@southcentral.nhs.uk

For the full statement download: Equality and Diversity Statement

For our Single Equality Scheme download

Equality evidence to comply with the Equality Act 2010: Equality analysis template

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