Enabling BME nurse and midwife progression into senior leadership positions

This report from NHS England summarises the learning from engagement work, which identifed what the best performing trusts in the workforce race equality standard area were doing, and includes examples that outline best practice approaches and a number of suggested actions to support improvement.

Workforce Race Equality Standard data reporting – December 2017

The 2017 report is the third publication since the NHS Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES) was mandated and covers all nine indicators.

Diversity and inclusion partners programme 2018/19

NHS Employers is inviting NHS organisations to apply for the prestigious 2018/19 annual diversity and inclusion partners programme. The programme supports participating trusts to progress and develop their equality performance over a period of 12 months, and is closely aligned to the Equality Delivery System (EDS2).

Applications opened on Monday 4 December 2017 and will close on Friday 9 February 2018

Jacqui Dyer: Talking about race and mental health is everyone’s business

As a government adviser on its new review of the Mental Health Act, Jacqui Dyer aims to address the ‘dirty secret’ that black people are too often detained in inpatient facilities. Click here for newspaper article

Transforming care: views sought on NHS quality checkers’ toolkits

NHS England is testing toolkits for quality checkers to use in the assessment of services for people with autism and/or learning disabilities including GPs, community services, dental, acute care, accident and emergency and mental health.

These draft toolkits have been co-produced with people with a learning disability, autism or both and include health issues that are important to them. Most of the toolkits have been tested in some NHS services, but NHS England wants to gain the views of people who work in the services, commissioners and others who are interested in this work. The closing date of 1 December 2017.

Measuring up: your community and your workforce

There are groups of potential candidates in your community who could help you to address your workforce supply challenges, now and in the future. In order to help employers think about recruiting from these groups, NHS Employers has launched a new digital tool to help you compare your current workforce data with data from your local community. 

The aim of the tool is to highlight groups in your community that may be missing from your workforce, and will signpost you to advice on how to better attract, recruit and retain from these groups in order to strengthen your workforce supply.

The new disability confident standard

As part of the disability confident campaign the DWP has produced a range of promotional material for employers and stakeholders to use on their internal communications, on their website and share with their customers and networks.

NHS Employers has been working closely with the Department of Work and Pensions and NHS England to encourage trusts to migrate across to the new disability confident standard. Trusts are encouraged to acquire the new disability confident standard as soon as possible as in readiness for the forthcoming Workforce Disability Equality Standard.

Find out more details on the disability confident scheme and download promotional material for your disability confident campaign.

Prime Minister launches world-leading project on impact of ethnicity on everyday life

The ethnicity facts and figures website brings together information from across government about how ethnicity affects people's everyday lives.

Key findings include:

• employment rates are higher for white people than for ethnic minorities across the country, with a larger gap in the north than in the south (13.6% compared to 9%)
• education attainment data shows there are disparities in primary school which increase in secondary school, with Chinese and Asian pupils tending to perform well and White and Black pupils doing less well, particularly those eligible for free school meals
• ethnic minorities are under-represented at senior levels across the public sector

Sexual Orientation Monitoring: Full Specification

This Standard provides the mechanism for recording the sexual orientation of all patients/service users aged 16 years and over across all health services and Local Authorities with responsibilities for Adult social care in England in all service areas where it may be relevant to record this data.

The latest from NHS Improvement's improvement hub

NHS Improvement is continuing to add resources to its improvement hub. Here's some of the most recent:

• Medway NHS Foundation Trust: orthopaedics handover
• How do boards govern for quality improvement?
• Supporting junior doctors in safe prescribing
• Learning disability and human rights

Equally outstanding: equality and human rights – good practice resource

This CQC guidance aims to help providers put equality and human rights at the heart of their improvement work so that the quality of care gets better for everyone. It contains case studies and identifies nine common success factors.

Career break returner programmes launched to help people back to work

New initiatives to help people return to work after career breaks have been launched.

The returner programmes – part of the £5 million fund announced in this year’s Budget – are formal schemes offered by employers to provide training and support to people who have taken time out of the workplace. The Government Equalities Office will be establishing four new returner schemes across the public sector.

Asthma action plans for HCPs working with non-English speakers

Asthma UK has responded to requests for non-English asthma action plans from healthcare professionals, pointing to the need for more health information in translation to help patients from ethnic minority populations to manage their asthma more effectively.

Equality and diversity mapping exercise 2017

NHS Employers is working with NHS England to gather information from trusts to:

• understand what the capacity is within NHS organisations to deliver against the various equality and diversity standards and mandates across England
• identify key trends, developments, issues and gaps
• assess how we can better support you to meet your requirements under the Equality Act 2010.

Diversity and inclusion conference 2017

The NHS Employers annual diversity and inclusion conference is being held on 21 September at the Business Design Centre, Islington.

This year we have a fantastic programme planned for delegates and are lucky to welcome global experts and inspirational key note speakers including Peter Cheese, Chief Executive, CIPD, Michael Bach, Founder and CEO, Canadian Centre for Diversity and Inclusion, Belinda Parmar, Chief Geek, Empathy Business and Dr Manuela Barreto from the University of Exeter.

Diversity and inclusion in the NHS survey

NHS Employers is working with NHS England to gather information to better understand the capacity within NHS organisations to deliver against key equality and diversity standards and mandates.

To capture the information we have developed a survey which will take no longer than 20 minutes to complete.

Equality, Diversity and Human Rights Week 2017

Last week's Equality, Diversity and Human Rights Week 2017 brought a great deal of activity in organisations across the NHS, celebrating the theme 'diverse, inclusive, together.' 

NHS Employers launched a range of tools and resources throughout the week, on topics including Brexit, widening participation and intersectionality. If you missed the intersectionality twitter chat there's a Twitter moment capturing highlights from the conversation.

NHS Employers announces the Diversity and Inclusion Partners 2017/18

Following a rigorous selection process, 30 NHS organisations have been chosen to be part of our 2017/18 diversity and inclusion partners programme.

The successful organisations are awarded partner status after demonstrating that they are delivering against six measurable criteria:

• improving patient access and experience
• empowered, engaged and well-supported staff
• inclusive leadership at all levels
• better health outcomes for all
• commitment to the partners programme
• their organisation will benefit from taking part in the programme

You can find more information about the 2017/18 diversity and inclusion partners on the partner’s web page.

EQW2017 - Widening Participation

As part of Equality, Diversity and Human Rights Week, NHS Employers will be focusing on widening participation.

The NHS Employers Widening Participation programme creates a sustainable approach for employers to engage with different community groups. The programme aims to work with employers in the NHS to:

• understand the reasons why the recruitment in the NHS is not representative of the communities it serves
• support employers to change their behaviours and organisational cultures to help widen participation into employment
• provide tools and resources for employers to understand their local opportunities for engaging with and recruiting from community groups
• promote support, advice and guidance available to employers and managers across the NHS to enable local improvement in widening participation.

New equality objectives to target inequality in health and social care

The CQC has published ambitious new equality objectives for 2017 - 19.  The new objectives for the next two years focus on our regulatory role in improving equality. Through our inspections, we will check that providers make person-centred care work for everyone, from all equality groups – for example for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people using adult social care or mental health inpatient services. We will look at how they are meeting the new Accessible Information Standard, which applies to disabled people who have information and communication needs, for example, deaf people or people with a learning disability. We will also ensure that we communicate with everyone who contacts us in a way that is accessible for them.