Publication of Equality Information and Equality Objectives

January 31st 2012

Introduction
Wolverhampton City PCT embraces the diversity of people from all groups in society, regardless of age, disability, gender reassignment, race, religion or belief, sex or sexual orientation. We are committed to eliminating unlawful discrimination by ensuring that the values underpinning equality, diversity and human rights are central to our policy making, service planning, employment practices and engagement and involvement.

Although health overall is improving, we know that unacceptable health inequalities persist between different communities in the region. As a commissioning organisation, we aim to promote health, provide family, community and mental health services, and commission hospital, community and other services for the residents of Wolverhampton.  We are in a powerful position to make a lasting difference to the health and wellbeing of the population.

As an employer, we also want to advocate good corporate citizenship, working for the welfare and cohesion of our workforce. In spite of progress in employment standards, certain groups remain under-represented in the NHS workforce and also experience difficulty in gaining promotion and making career progress.

Although we have made some gains in embedding equality and diversity as an integral part of the organisation, we still have much to do.   As well as fulfilling our statutory responsibilities, we also need to make sure that people in Wolverhampton experience real improvements in health and well-being. We would like our region to be acknowledged and recognised nationally as a leader of equality and diversity in the workplace, and more importantly excelling in the commissioning of high quality healthcare services for all.

This information will showcase how Wolverhampton City PCT is;

Meeting our Legal Duties
As a public body and commissioner of healthcare services, we have a number of legal duties related to equality and diversity issues based on the Public Sector Equality Duty, 2011. Public bodies subject to the specific duties must publish information to show their compliance. This means that the information they publish must show that they have due regard to the need to:

The protected characteristics covered by the Equality Duty are:

New regulations came into force in September 2011 requiring all public bodies, including NHS organisations, to publish information on the steps they are taking to comply with the equality duty under the 2010 Equality Act.  The regulations require public bodies to publish ‘relevant, proportionate information demonstrating their compliance’ and to set themselves ‘specific, measurable equality objectives’. 

The NHS Equality Delivery System (EDS) is a framework to help organisations meet these requirements.

The EDS
The EDS is being used nationally to improve equality performance.  The programme involves a set of four equality objectives with 18 outcomes in service delivery and workforce issues.  Wolverhampton City PCT in collaboration with Wolverhampton City PCT CCGs (Clinical Commissioning Groups) will be working together to deliver outcomes which align most closely with corporate objectives and the commissioning strategy. The outcomes will be graded via public and patient consultation using a group of trained assessors. The EDS requires NHS organisations in collaboration with local interests to analyse and grade their performance, and set defined equality objectives, supported by an action plan.  Performance against the selected objectives should be reviewed annually.  These processes need to be integrated within mainstream business planning.  Once the final EDS grades have been agreed between the NHS organisation and local interests, the group will have the responsibility to ensure that LINKS/Health Watch or its local equivalent relay the priorities and grades of individual organisation to Local Authority Overview and Scrutiny Committees and Health and Wellbeing Boards, NHS Trust Boards, PPGs (Patient Participation Groups), other committees and staff. 

Click here for further information on the nine steps recommended to complete this process

Click here to download the Wolverhampton City PCT Single Equality Scheme

Equality Impact Assessments/Equality Analysis
All individuals and population groups should have equal opportunity to benefit from health policies. Inequalities in health between different ethnic groups and between men and women are well documented and long-standing but we must look further than this and the Equality Act 2010 has made .

We cannot simply assume that health policy will be equally beneficial for everyone and a professional approach to policy-making means testing our assumptions. Carrying out equality impact assessments is also a legal requirement. Public bodies have for many years been required not to discriminate in the delivery of their services or in the employment of their staff.  Wolverhampton City PCT is committed to the assessment of its activities to ensure that no one group is discriminated against and by assessing the potential effects of a policy on particular populations in a rigorous way, we can increase the probability that a policy will promote equality of access and equity of outcomes.

If policies are assessed for their impact on different sections of the population from the outset, we are better placed to meet our legal obligations. More importantly, we are more likely to produce a better policy that will benefit everyone in the population.

As Wolverhampton City PCT is part of the Black Country Cluster, we have been working recently to create a cluster Equality Impact Assessment/Analysis form to be used before a policy, strategy or new business case is passed.  This will serve to promote consistency across the cluster as well as be effective for monitoring purposes and future action planning.

Performance
Our performance against the goals and objectives set by the EDS will be graded internally and by external interest groups. This will ensure that we are providing robust and accurate information and setting action plans that guarantee we go beyond our legal requirements and place equality values at the foundation of everything we do for patients and staff.

In April 2012, our performance section will go live on our website and we will publish our first grading report and supporting evidence.  This will be in the form of a narrative table showing our key objectives, why we have chosen them, how we are graded against them and what action plans we have in place to meet those objectives.  These will then be reviewed in January 2013. 

Equality Objectives
Small PDF icon Equality Objectives for Primary Care Trusts in the Black Country Cluster

Other Equality Information
In addition we are attached other Equality Information as stated in the introduction.  This will demonstrate both meeting our legal duties and what recommendations we have in place to support future working particularly in embedding equality in all that we do.

Please click here for the Equality Workforce Monitoring Data report

For information regarding those that use our services, please download the Wolverhampton City PCT Annual Report for 2010/11 as well as the last Public Health report.  We will be using this demographic information to help inform us when setting our equality objectives as well as input from the Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA) on Priorities Emerging from Health and Social Care.  These documents will enable us to tackle specific areas involving health inequalities and working with protected groups. 

Further information on the Equality Act can be found via the links below:

For further information or if you require any of this information in a different format please contact:

Page last updated: 1 February 2012

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