Race, Equality and Diversity - our aims
We're fully committed to improving Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) for patients, communities and staff across the South Yorkshire (SY) health and care system.
Our work to improve the inclusivity and diversity of our organisations draws on key NHS England documents, including; the NHS People Plan (2020) and the NHS People Promise, the core of which is illustrated below.
NHS England and NHS Improvement’s (NHSE/I) Workforce Race Equality Standards (WRES), also provides key information to understand our organisations, to ensure we are serving our colleagues equitably.
With the introduction of NHS England’s EDI Improvement Plan in June 2023, we are now also aligning our work to the 6 identified High Impact Actions:
Success metric
1a. Annual Chair/CEO appraisals on EDI objectives via Board
Assurance Framework (BAF).
Success metric
2a. Relative likelihood of staff being appointed from
shortlisting across all posts
2b. NSS Q on access to career progression and training and
development opportunities.
2c. Improvement in race and disability representation
leading to parity
2d. Improvement in representation senior leadership
(Band 8C upwards) leading to parity
2e. Diversity in shortlisted candidates
2f. NETS Combined Indicator Score metric on
quality of training.
Success metric
3a. Improvement in gender, race, and disability pay gap
Success metric
4a. NSS Q on organisation action on health and
wellbeing concerns
4b. National Education & Training Survey (NETS) Combined
Indicator Score metric on quality of training
4c. To be developed in Year 2
Success metric
5a. NSS Q on belonging for IR staff.
5b. NSS Q on bullying, harassment from team/line
manager for IR staff.
5c. NETS Combined Indicator Score metric on quality
of training IR staff.
Success metric
6a. Improvement in staff survey results on bullying /
harassment from line managers/teams (ALL Staff)
6b. Improvement in staff survey results on discrimination from
line managers/teams (ALL Staff)
6c. NETS Bullying & Harassment score metric
(NHS professional groups)
Key Areas of Work:
Supporting Staff Networks
Staff Networks are key to supporting our health and care workforce. Many partners across South Yorkshire provide staff networks supporting people with protected characteristic and form groups around race, disability, and the LGBTQ+ community and many others. They are a safe place for staff to come together share their experiences, organise and campaign for positive change, and meet with allies, share knowledge and increase awareness of their communities. Networks play a pivotal role in how organisations make strategic improvements and embrace the diversity of their teams. Most networks are for those with lived experience of their subject area and for allies who want to be part of supporting positive changes in their organisations. Networks also work closely with their specific execute sponsor to ensure that their concerns and ideas are heard by senior leaders.
In November 2024 we reconnected staff networks across South Yorkshire’s health and care system with our Staff Networks: Connect and Empower event. One hundred people involved in the array of networks offered across the SY ICS came together to share good practice and successes achieved, to workshop their challenges and to share their staff network journeys with one another. One of the actions to come out of that event was the SY ICS Staff network Handbook that can be viewed below. We are also maintaining the connections made at this event by holding biannual Staff Network Chairs meetings for those in health and care. If you are a network chair and would like to join these meetings, please email - syicb-sheffield.hwb@nhs.net
We also previously held a successful event in September 2022 to bring staff together and offer further support, with contributions from our keynote speaker, champion of staff networks, Cherron Inko-Tariah, a leading national voice in this area.
A film was produced by Rodman Films after the event to get across the benefits of a staff network for individuals and for organisations.
We are keen to address racism at a system level, linking with a clear ‘Joint Commitment’ in the Integrated Care Partnership Strategy to ‘Identify, recognise and tackle systemic discrimination including a focus on anti-racism’.
We have continued to improve on system wide data collation building on existing reporting i.e. WRES, WDES, EDS2 etc. and have used this data to develop improvement plans.
Click here to see more about Health Inequalities: Health Inequalities
Did you know?
The SY ICS has an EDI Steering Group of EDI leads across different NHS Trusts and organisations across South Yorkshire, working together to do coordinated work to reduce health inequalities and make South Yorkshire health and care anti-racist.
And…
Building on the excellent work of the EDI Steering Group, through 2023 we will establish an Equality Diversity and Inclusion Executive Board to be chaired by the Independent Chair of ICB, to ensure the EDI agenda attains a high profile and engages senior-level input.
EDI Co-Production Group worked with HR colleagues at the ICB to develop the recruitment process for ICB Board positions to increase diversity of representation - as a result, a new ethnically diverse Independent Non-Executive Member (INEM) was recruited.
In addition, we introduced an Associate INEM Scheme to allow for two candidates per year to develop into these INEM positions to create a more diverse pipeline into Board positions across South Yorkshire.
See our current Board
Maria Lewin facilitated a British Sign Language and Deaf Awareness taster session, to include finger spelling, greetings, medical terminology and emotions
British Sign Language and Deaf Awareness Taster Session
Greetings Signs - British Sign Language
BSL-Fingerspelling-Right-Handed_1.pdf
BSL-Fingerspelling-Left-Handed.pdf