NHS North East
NHS North East (North East SHA) was created in 2006 and has around 100 staff and oversees the work, collectively, of 23 individual NHS organisations in the region. The SHA covers an area from the Scottish border, down to North Yorkshire and across to the Cumbria, encompassing a population of around 2.6 million.
The SHA includes Middlesbrough Primary Care Trust (PCT), Hartlepool PCT, Stockton-on-Tees TPCT and Redcar and Cleveland PcT, who worked with other trusts in the area, to develop the approach.
The SES template includes:
- a shared vision of equality and diversity for service users and NHS staff across the region
- shared objectives
- common core actions, which are monitored via an agreed performance management tool
Each trust has added their own local information and local action points to the template. The region’s Equalities and Human Rights Network enables equality leads from all trusts to meet and share good practice, learning points, problems and concerns.
Prior to the SES, trusts were working individually on their own equality schemes so there was much overlap and duplication.
The SHA knew the Equality Bill would encourage an SES approach, so towards the end of 2007, it decided to ask trusts to work together to develop a model for one SES for them all.
The region elected representatives from the Network to act as a working group that would meet regularly to develop the approach and feedback more widely. It agreed to develop an SES template containing core information that was common to all organisations, which could then be adapted by trusts to include local details.
The shared objectives were developed based on feedback from local people across the region who had contributed to previous consultations, including service users, carers and third sector organisations.
Key objectives included: leadership, corporate commitment, equality impact assessments, partnership working, consultation and involvement, accessibility and communications, workforce and training, commissioning and procurement, monitoring data, reporting and publishing, and complaints.
Under each of the objective headings, the group created standard text which was then considered and agreed more widely.
The SHA wanted to make the document meaningful for those accessing it, so it contacted local groups and organisations across the region, asking key questions about why different equality strands were important; why the NHS should take them seriously; how they could make a difference; and what key messages they would like taken on board. These were incorporated into the SES template.
The engagement work was done with the help of the North East Community and Voluntary Sector Equalities Coalition – a collaboration of voluntary community groups across the whole region.
All the trusts involved have signed up to the agreed actions and the SHA will review progress on an annual basis, using an agreed performance management framework. The SES was officially launched at the SHA's conference, ‘Our Vision, Our Future – Celebrating the Equality and Diversity of our staff and patients’.
- A consistent and comprehensive approach to SESs across the region based on identified needs and views of service users, carers and staff
- Agreed common actions across the region that will be reviewed, to ensure consistency, best practice and the opportunity to benchmark
- The framework has allowed the SHA to establish realistic, relevant goals and targets
- Making effective use of the skills and resources across the region
- An easy-read version is now being developed by a group of students with learning disabilities, who are on work experience placements with local trusts
- The first annual report of the SES published April 2009, with action plans shared via an SHA-wide ‘extranet’ site, so trusts can benchmark progress against each other and share best practice
Jane Miller, Equality and Diversity Manager, North East Ambulance Service NHS Trust, call on 0191 430 2181 or email jane.miller@neas.nhs.uk