Welcome to our Equality pages.  This is where you will find out what we are doing on equality and diversity to improve employment opportunities and services in Bradford District.

Equality Statement

We have a policy statement that clearly outlines our commitment to equality for patients and staff:

Patients

• You and your family have the right to be treated fairly and be routinely involved in decisions about your treatment and care. You can expect to be treated with dignity and respect. You will not be discriminated against on any grounds including age, disability, gender reassignment, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex or sexual orientation.
• You have a responsibility to treat other patients and our staff with dignity and respect

Staff

• You have the right to be treated fairly in recruitment and career progression. You can expect to work in an environment where diversity is valued and equality of opportunity is promoted. You will not be discriminated against on any grounds including age, disability, gender reassignment, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex or sexual orientation.
• You have a responsibility to ensure that you treat our patients and your colleagues with dignity and respect.

In partnership with:

Work Across the NHS in Bradford, Airedale and Craven

In 2010 the four largest NHS organisations in Bradford and Airedale began working in partnership with local people to take a new approach to improving equality for local people (patients, service users, staff and community members) from the Equality Act “protected groups”:

• age
• disability
• gender reassignment
• marriage and civil partnership
• pregnancy & maternity
• race
• religion & belief
• sex
• sexual orientation

Our Board of Directors approved our joint working on equality in June of 2011.  We have also nominated an Executive Director and Non-Executive Director who have Board level responsibility for the Equality and Diversity agenda.

The Bradford and Airedale NHS Equality Group

This group includes representatives from:

• Age Concern Bradford and Airedale
• Black Health Forum
• Bradford Action for Refugees
• Bradford and Airedale Mental Health Advocacy Project
• Bradford District Women's Forum
• Bradford District Care Trust Black and Minority Ethnic Staff Network
• Bradford District Care Trust Disabled Staff Network
• Bradford District Care Trust Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans Staff Network
• Bradford Metropolitan District Council
• Bradford Muslim Women’s Council
• Bradford LINk
• Bradford Older People’s Alliance
• Bradford Teaching Hospitals Black and Minority Ethnic Staff Network
• Bradford Teaching Hospitals Disabled Staff Network
• Bradford Teaching Hospitals Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Staff Network
• Bradnet
• Carers’ Resource
• Council for Mosques
• Equity Partnership
• Health Partnership Project
• Healthier Lives
• Just West Yorkshire
• Mind in Bradford
• NHS Bradford and Airedale Black and Minority Ethnic Staff Network
• NHS Bradford and Airedale Staff Disability Network
• NHS Bradford and Airedale Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Staff Network
• Sharing Voices
• Strategic Disability Partnership
• Thornbury Centre
• University of Bradford’s Centre for Diversity & Inclusion
• VCS Assembly Equalities Forum
• VCS Assembly Health & Wellbeing Forum

The group has:

• agreed priority equality objectives and will be monitoring progress in meeting them
• used the new Equality Delivery System (EDS) to measure the local NHS against four key goals:
• • Better health outcomes for all,
  • Improved patient access and experience,
  • Empowered, engaged and well supported staff
  • Inclusive leadership at all levels

Links to: Terms of Reference | Ways of Working | Minutes of the Group’s Meetings

How well are we doing with Equality and Diversity?

Members of the Bradford and Airedale NHS Equality Group have formed Equality Delivery System assessment panels to consider and moderate the equality and diversity performance of each NHS trust using the Equality Delivery System framework.

The evidence for each trust provides detailed information about how well each NHS trust is doing in:

Health Inequalities

The group has discussed and added to summaries of health inequalities as they affect Equality Act protected groups.  These bring together research evidence, statistical data and the experience of local people and are helping us to prioritise equality objectives.

The summaries are available here:

• age
• disability
• gender reassignment
• marriage and civil partnership
• pregnancy & maternity
• race
• religion & belief
• sex
• sexual orientation

Equality Objectives

The specific duties of the Equality Act requires us to:

• Prepare and publish equality objectives by 6 April 2012, and at least every four years after that
• Ensure that the objectives are specific and measurable, and set out how progress towards the objectives will be measured
• Publish details of engagement in developing the equality objectives also at least every four years, and in line with publication of objectives
• Consider its published equality information before preparing and publishing these objectives
• Publish the objectives in a reasonably accessible format.

In February 2012 the Bradford and Airedale NHS Equality Group met to agree equality objectives using the information about health inequalities and the results of our Equality Delivery System assessment panels.
Setting objectives encourages an outcome-focused approach to setting challenging but measurable targets to improve service outcomes and the employment outcomes for staff.   We are taking practical action on the major equality issues. The aim is to produce objectives that address the biggest and most pressing issues facing the protected groups that we provide services for and employ.

The Heads of Equality across the District looked at existing evidence of our performance against the four goals.  Between January and March 2012, members of the Bradford and Airedale NHS Equality Group sat on Panels to consider the evidence and assess the grades for the four Trusts. The Panels amended the self-assessments based on additional evidence they had and through benchmarking with the other Trusts.  

We have agreed Equality Objectives for each organisation.  Seven of these we will work on jointly and the eighth we will lead on individually.  Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Equality Objectives are:

Objective one - Improve EDS grades year on year: Our assessment Panels have effectively involved local interests and provided a useful baseline description of our strengths and weaknesses. All four Trusts will work jointly on at least the following:

• pay gap
• better meeting the needs of people from Gypsy, Traveller & Roma communities
• carers (including gathering of data)
• staff survey
• interpreting
• improving the gathering & use of equality data (improve monitoring of religion)

We have also identified the need for all Trusts to focus more on evidence of impact than evidence of activity.

Objective two - Improve EDS process, year on year: We need to improve the involvement of protected groups who have been under-represented in the Bradford and Airedale NHS Equality Group.  Specifically we will:

• Gather more local evidence on the experiences of older people (including Black and Minority Ethnic older people)
• Involve young people (including BME young people) in a focused project
• Develop a coordinated health and race equality infrastructure

Objective three - Ensure that services better meet the needs of trans people: Across all four Trusts, and all four goals, the protected group with the lowest Equality Delivery System grades is transgender people.  Bradford District Care Trust has developed a policy and provided staff training. Bradford Teaching Hospitals Foundation Trust has been involved in a regional group developing a protocol for the provision of hospital services to trans people, which we will be consulting on shortly.

We recognise that we do not have sufficient information about the health needs and experiences of trans people and need to work to make NHS services more welcoming and inclusive of trans service users.

Objective four - Make information more accessible - to better meet needs of visually impaired people, Deaf people and people with language / literacy issues: A strong theme of the additional evidence submitted by EDS Panel members has been the inaccessibility of much NHS information to visually impaired people, Deaf people and people from the Gypsy, Traveller & Roma communities and people with literacy / languages issues.

Objective five - Improve the access and  experience of BME patients and service users: Evidence from the GP patient survey, from focus groups and interviews with Muslim people using palliative care services and BME people using maternity services and from the mental health reading of rights audit show poor experiences and lower levels of satisfaction amongst BME people.

Objective six - Reduce inequality experienced by BME staff and applicants: Evidence of the significantly lower proportions of BME job applicants who are shortlisted and of BME interviewees who are appointed in all our Trusts, the disproportionate representation of BME staff in disciplinary hearings in some of our Trusts and the lower levels of BME staff satisfaction in the staff survey for some of our Trusts all indicate that this needs to be a priority.

Objective seven - Increase the diversity of Trust / CCG boards / boards of governors and their understanding of equality issues: Evidence gathered at the request of our goal four assessment Panel shows that our boards are not representative of local communities.

Objective eight - Determine whether people from protected groups are disadvantaged by the Complaints process: This is the BTHFT specific objective and we will initially lead on this work within the District partnership.  For most Trusts it is not currently possible to disaggregate different groups’ experiences of using our complaints systems.  Some concerns were raised by Panel members that the system is not as accessible to all protected groups.  

The Equality Leads across the district will agree work streams, milestones and impact measures which will be discussed and agreed at the June meeting of Bradford and Airedale Equality Group and will be included here after that.

Gaps

We are still collecting information for compliance with the equality duty.  We have identified two key gaps in our evidence base:

Further Information or Alternative Formats

If you have any questions or would like any of our information in another format, please contact Lorraine Cameron , Head of Equality and Diversity, Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust at Lorraine.cameron@bthft.nhs.uk or telephone 01274 382428.

Statement of Community Involvement

The information about the EDS and our approach has been discussed and approved by the Bradford and Airedale NHS Equality Group on 19^th December 2011.

Additional information will be approved at subsequent meetings of the same group.

This site was last updated on: 29th March 2012