Published on: 15th April 2015
The Trust has welcomed the recent, (March 12), announcement by NHS England to improve race equality across the NHS workforce. The move follows recent reports that have highlighted disparities in the number of Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) people in senior leadership positions across the NHS, as well as lower levels of wellbeing amongst the BME population.
From April, NHS organisations across the country will be required to demonstrate progress against a number of indicators of workforce equality, to ensure that their boards are representative of the communities they serve.
The Lincolnshire provider of specialist NHS mental and social healthcare services has already collected the majority of this data, so just a few changes will be required to its current systems to meet the new standard.
Our equality and diversity lead, Sophie Ford, said:
We recognise the value of equality as an employer and a service provider and we make every effort to eliminate discrimination and reduce inequality.
The analysis of our workforce and patient data helps to ensure that we have a workforce that is both representative of the community we serve and services that are accessible to the people that need them.
Our robust systems compare our data to our local population and our latest figures for 2014/15 will be published in our annual equality report in June.
Chief executive of NHS England, Simon Stevens, said:
We know that care is far more likely to meet the needs of all the patients we’re here to serve when NHS leadership is drawn from diverse communities across the country, and when all our frontline staff are themselves free from discrimination. These new mandatory standards will help NHS organisations to achieve these important goals.
