We are dedicated to creating a culture of belonging and supporting our diverse service users, colleagues and communities.
We’re on a journey with our equality, diversity and inclusion work and recognise there are areas of improvement which we continue to work on.
Equality, diversity and inclusion is something we think about in everything we do. We are constantly holding a mirror against who we are, and challenging behaviours and attitudes to embed meaningful actions which make change. This is everyone’s business, in every role across our organisation.
Recent events have sadly shown that racial injustices still exist within our society. The murder of George Floyd and the events which followed, and the disproportionate impact of covid on our Black, Asian and minority ethnic population has highlighted that racism is poisoning our society, process and systems.
Now is the time to take action. We can’t sit back and simply do nothing.
We published our anti-racist statement and our transgender and non-binary statement, to reinforce our zero tolerance approach to discrimination with no room for neutrality.
- Challenging poor behaviours, attitudes and the status quo to make a difference
- Becoming an anti-racist organisation, as mentioned in our anti-racist statement
- Improving our recruitment practices to appoint diversity from our local communities
- Educating, supporting and raising awareness of equality, diversity and inclusion
- Supporting our staff networks to continue to develop and thrive and ensure your voices are heard
- Working on advancing mental health equalities across our populations
Racism exists in every corner of our society and the NHS is not immune to this. We know racism is in all processes and procedures and we must root it out.
Racism does not have a place in our organisation. We will challenge poor behaviour, eradicate, and challenge incidents of discrimination, victimisation or harassment based on a person’s ethnicity. We have a zero-tolerance approach to such behaviour and will take all necessary action to protect our diverse workforce and service users from such poor attitudes.
In 2020 we became the first NHS trust in the North West to publish an anti-racist statement, publicly pledging our commitment to become anti-racist.
We know we’re not perfect. We’re on a journey with our equality, diversity and inclusion work and continuously hold a mirror up to ourselves, educate ourselves, and challenge both ourselves and others.
Our colleagues at Tameside and Glossop child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) have done a piece of work on racism and mental health, with a pledge to patients and everyone who uses our services.
Anti-racist framework and action plan
Evelyn Asante-Mensah OBE, our chair, is also the chair of the North West Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) Advisory Group, providing a strategic steer and guidance to organisations on this important agenda of work.
The group published its anti-racist framework providing guidance to embed meaningful actions to drive change. We have now developed our action plan in response to this framework, which outlines what we intend to do as an organisation to improve.
Anti-racist survey
In 2022 and 2023 we carried out an anti-racist survey, which was developed and managed by an external analytics company Flair. It aimed to understand the experiences of our black, Asian and minority ethnic colleagues and recognise how all colleagues dealt with poor behaviour in the workplace.
The survey focused on four key themes:
- Racial diversity - how comfortable do employees feel in responding to racism that witnessed
- Racial inclusion barriers - to what extent do employees feel their ethnicity is blocking them from accessing key drivers of inclusion
- Racial awareness - how much are employees witnessing and being subject to: racist jokes, racial microaggressions, racist harassment and racial discrimination
- Racist behaviours - how ethnically diverse is the workforce in comparison to the local population
From the results we have developed an action plan, which includes:
- ‘Active bystander’ training to help those who witnessing racial microaggressions or harassment
- Developing an anti-racism policy and guidance for all staff
- More advice and signposting on our intranet
- A simpler process for reporting micro-aggressions
- Improve wellbeing support for colleagues who are affected
- Reviewing and improving current recruitment practices
- Focus groups to engage with people about these recommendations
- A mentoring programme for black, Asian and minority colleagues
As a public sector organisation, we have a statutory duty to ensure that equality, diversity and human rights are embedded into all functions and activities. This is required by the Equality Act 2010, the Human Rights Act 1998 and the NHS Constitution.
Here are some of the ways we monitor how we're doing:
- The Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES), which highlights the experience of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) members of the workforce compared to their white counterparts.
- The Workforce Disability Equality Standard (WDES) which highlights the experiences of disabled members of the workforce compared to their non-disabled counterparts.
- Gender pay gap reporting, which looks at the disparity of pay between male and female workers.
- The Accessible Information Standard and our website accessibility statement help to ensure you can access health and social care information in a format you understand.
- Our progress against our EDS2 goals set. EDS2 is a toolkit to support NHS organisations to identify, implement, embed and deliver their equality objectives. View our latest EDS2 update.
- Our Friends and Family Test equality, diversity and inclusion results, which provide information about people's views on our services broken down by their protected characteristics.
- We're also required to publish our equality objectives and an annual progress report
Health inequalities are unfair and avoidable differences in health across the population, and between different groups within society.
Health inequalities can impact anyone. Reducing health inequalities is a key task for us and something we are committed to undertaking. It requires meaningful, effective actions to be implemented.
The Centre for Mental Health have produced a mental health inequalities factsheet with some more information on this.
Our board, alongside our head of equality, diversity and inclusion, are looking into the development of a health inequalities strategy, to outline the challenges we face and how we will ensure equitable support and access for all.
We have signed up to the ‘advancing mental health equalities’ national resource, developed with the Royal College of Physiatrists and NHS England and NHS Improvement. This allows us to work with targeted portions of the population, embed innovative approaches and strategies, and reduce mental health inequalities.
Work is also continuing in building relationships with community networks, forums and groups. If you are interested in any of this work, please email pcn.tr.equalitydiversityinclusion@nhs.net
Read our health inequalities board paper for more information on the work we're doing.
We have a number of staff networks, including Race Equality, LGBTQ+, Positive Ability, Multi-Faith, Women's, and Men's Wellbeing networks, to challenge us and help us constantly improve.
Visit our staff networks page to learn more.