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 across protected characteristics such as race, disability, and LGBT+. They are a safe place for staff to come together and meet with allies, for all to gain knowledge and better understanding, and to help organisations embrace the diversity of their teams.

We held a successful event in September 2022 to bring staff together and offer further support, with contributions from our keynote speaker, Cherron Ink-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

 

 

 

 

 

To view the Workforce wellbeing website visit here

Want to get involved?

 

Improving Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in our region - examples

Select one of the stories below to find out more: