Equality and diversity

Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust is committed to ensuring the advancement of equality and opportunity between different groups, whether they are employees or the patients and public we serve.

General Equality & Diversity Scheme 2013

The General Equality Duty

In recent years a range of new legislation and national policy initiatives have been introduced to ensure fair recruitment and employment practice and to ensure that services are fully accessible and appropriate to individual patients

The equality Act 2010 introduced a general equality duty requiring organisations, in the exercise of their functions, to have due regard to the need to:

• eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment, victimisation and other conduct prohibited by the Act
• advance equality of opportunity between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not
• foster good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not

By:

• removing or minimising disadvantages suffered by people due to their protected characteristics
• taking steps to meet the needs of people from protected groups where these are different from the needs of other people
• encouraging people from protected groups to participate in public life or in other activities where their participation is disproportionately low

The General Equality and Diversity Scheme sets out the updated policy, intended strategic outcomes, key working principles, responsibilities, accountabilities and actions that will enable the Trust to comply with the various pieces of equality legislation and ensure equity in both employment and service delivery.

Quarterly Workforce Information Report

This report sets out known data on the protected characteristics of our workforce.

Where relevant, the data is analysed against the workforce equality targets identified in the General Equality and Diversity Scheme 2011.

The latest quarterly report is available below.

Workforce Race Equality Standards Report

The WRES Report details the actions the Trust will be taking to improve the opportunities, experiences and working environment for BME staff (black and minority ethnic) to help lead to improvements in quality of care and satisfaction for all patients.

Workforce Disability Equality Standards Report

The workforce disability equality standard (WDES) is a new national NHS indicator that identifies areas for development and improvement in the working lives of disabled colleagues. The WDES Report details actions the Trust will be taking to improve the experience of disabled colleagues.