As a Strategic Health Authority, NHS Yorkshire and the Humber does not commission or deliver services to patients; our role is that of strategic leader of the health system in the region. In pursuing this role the SHA is dedicated to providing steer and support to our Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) and NHS trusts to fulfil the Public Sector Equality Duties as well as being a role model and promoting best practice within the organisation. This section of the website will showcase the work we have done to fulfil this role.
Equality and Diversity Governance Arrangements
Four clusters of SHAs have now been formed and from 3 October 2011 NHS North West, NHS Yorkshire & the Humber and NHS North East - the three Strategic Health Authorities in the North of England were placed under a single management framework as NHS North of England.
In the Cluster Board Management Structure, the Director of Workforce and Education has been nominated to take the lead on all E&D issues for the North of England SHA. He will be responsible for ensuring that:
- Directorates are held to account for delivering their objectives
- Meetings are convened with relevant representatives from Directorates as might be necessary to ensure the Public Sector Equality Duties are being delivered as specified
- Each SHA Senior Management Team is updated on progress in delivering the Public Sector Equality Duties and any remedial actions required, on a regular basis.
Progress is reported to the SHA Cluster Board on a regular basis.
Implementation of the Equality Delivery System
In late 2010 the NHS Equality and Diversity Council (EDC) together with the ten SHAs across England began working with key stakeholders (patients, staff, trade unions, professional bodies, etc) to develop an Equality Delivery System (EDS) to be used by commissioners and providers of health services. By following the link below you can find out more about how the EDS can be used to improve performance on addressing health inequalities for protected groups and how it is being aligned to support organisations in delivering the new Public Sector Equality Duties.
The EDS was approved by the EDC at its meeting in July 2011 and was formally launched in October 2011. The full documentation and the latest news on the EDS is currently hosted on behalf of the NHS on the website of NHS East Midlands.
Equality Delivery System Webpages
In our region, implementation of the EDS is being coordinated by this SHA through the newly formed PCT Clusters to ensure that the system is built into the core of the emerging architecture for the new NHS.
We have coordinated a number of events in Yorkshire and Humber to aid implementation which have been very successful. To read more about these events please click the summary documents below:
Equality Delivery System Event (215.8KB)
Developing Capability and Capacity of Equality and Diversity Leads
NHS organisations are individually accountable to the relevant regulatory bodies for ensuring that the services they deliver meet the needs of the diverse communities they serve. However the SHA recognises that as the current leader of the NHS regionally, it has a role to play in providing advice, support and encouragement, to facilitate organisations and particularly PCTs, in maintaining compliance as a minimum.
To this end, amongst other things the SHA has continued to organise and facilitate a network for the E&D Leads of NHS organisations in the region. Whilst the Leads meet quarterly, one of the main benefits is the virtual network that has developed around the sharing of issues, experiences and learning. Key activities for the network in 2011/12 were:
- Regular updates on the progress of the Equality Act 2010 and the new Public Sector Equality Duties
- Contributing to the development of the NHS Equality Delivery System
- Development of Yorkshire and Humber Protocol Providing Hospital Services To Trans Patients
- Sharing of best practice
Working in partnership with the NHS National Leadership Council and Equality Works, the SHA has offered E&D leads in the region have been access to a leadership development programme leading to ILM 4 accreditation. The programme commenced in January 2012 and a number of Leads are currently on this programme. Inital feedback has been good.
In addition to EDS events the SHA has commissioned, designed and facilitated a variety of events (E.g. Establishing EqIA processes; Equality Act 2010 Briefing; Developing the NHS Data Guide; etc) to support the development of E&D capability and capacity within the region.
We are proud that in each NHS organisation across the region an Executive and Non-Executive lead for the Equality and Diversity has been secured, to act as champions, ensuring a continuing focus on this important agenda.
Yorkshire and Humber SHA is active in organising informative events which promote equality and diversity. In 2011 we worked in partnership with the University of Bradford and NHS North West to organise and deliver a national academic conference on equalities. The main focus of the conferences was to explore and consider what we need to do to ensure that diversity interventions within organisations deliver sustainable change. Over 100 delegates attended and provided very positive feedback on the usefulness of the content in terms of supporting their practice.
Upcoming Events
The next regional event funded by the SHA will focus on raising awareness of transgender issues within the health care community. The need for this event became apparent at the NHS Sheffield event aimed at raising awareness of Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual experiences of healthcare. The Transgender event is being organised by the Sheffield Centre for HIV and Aids. Taking place on 20th March 2012 and open to all NHS staff, see a flyer below for further information:
Transgender Conference Flyer (120.3KB)
Information
Under the proposed NHS reforms the SHA will cease operating in March 2013. This means that, as you might imagine, there is very limited recruitment taking place within the SHA at this time. As such there is little chance to influence the profile of our existing workforce. In these circumstances, our priority in terms of our staff in 2012 will be to ensure they are well supported and treated fairly during transition to organisations in the emerging system that will replace SHAs and PCTs. We will therefore be collecting and analysing data about the workforce which will be used to monitor the effectiveness of our processes and decisions.
It also means that the continuing focus for the SHA E&D team over the next year will be working with colleagues at national and regional level to improve the systems and processes for collecting patient data across all protected groups so that it can be used by commissioners and providers to improve service quality and eliminate existing health in equalities. In support of this objective we previously commissioned and facilitated a regional conference on the issue of improving data collection from BME patients. A report on the event (“Delivering Effective NHS Services to Multiethnic Populations: Collection of Ethnic Monitoring Data within Primary Care”) was produced and circulated widely. Click on link below for full report.
As a follow on from this we have recently commissioned an audit of all patient data systems used by providers in order to identify those that don’t provide the facility to capture relevant data across all the equality strands. We will use the results from this audit to work with partners nationally to address any gaps we may find.
Policy and Practice
The equality and diversity team have been integral to ensuring that equalities considerations are embedded into the Y&H Service Change Assurance Process, providing constructive feedback on all submissions received.
The E&D lead for Y&H SHA has played an active role in the scrutiny of all PCT Commissioning Intentions submitted in 2008/09 and 2009/10. This has demonstrated a marked improvement in the consideration given to equalities issues
There is extensive data available on the lack of BME employees in senior management positions, in response to this Yorkshire and Humber SHA commissioned the design and delivery of a development programme for BME staff in Agenda for Change Bands 5 and 6. This programme evaluated very positively.
Healthy Ambitions is the Yorkshire and Humber health strategy.
Improving care for people with learning disabilities is one of the chapters of this strategy. Recognising the evidence that demonstrates people with a learning disability are more likely not to have their physical-health needs recognised or noticed, or have them managed poorly Healthy Ambitions sets 4 top targets to improve the health of people with learning disabilities:
· Campus homes are closed and people who lived in long stay hospitals have moved into their own homes
· People with learning disabilities can use the same health services – and get the same treatment – as everybody else. They can get extra help if they need it, to get healthy and stay healthy.
· People with learning disabilities who are using health services that the NHS buys or provides are safe
· Progress is being made in developing local services for people who need more help to be healthy
Significant progress has been made across the region towards meeting these targets. To access a full update report on how each of the sub regions are working towards improving outcomes for people with learning disabilities, click below:
YH Good Practice and Innovation Guide 2011 (837.6KB)
Diversity in the SHA Workforce
The SHA's latest report on diversity in the workforce is incorporated into the SHA activity report 2010/11 this provides an update on diversity in relation to the SHA workforce and reports the progress made on the actions identified in the previous report on Diversity in the Workforce 2009/10. The latest report can be accessed via the link below:
Workforce Equality and Diversity Briefing Paper (271.2KB)
For previous reports see the previous publications page.
