Equality and Diversity
Welcome to our Equality, Diversity and Human Rights section. The
section contains our Single Equality Scheme 2011/12 and provides a
range of information about the Equality Delivery
System.
As a public sector organisation NHS County Durham and
Darlington are statutorily required to ensure that equality,
diversity and human rights are embedded into all our functions and
activities as per the Equality Act 2010, the Human Rights Act 1998
and the NHS Constitution. In the exercise of our functions we will
have due regard to the need to:
- Eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation
and other conduct prohibited by the Act.
- Advance equality of opportunity between people who share a
protected characteristic and those who do not.
- Foster good relations between people who share protected
characteristics and those who do not.
This means that each Trust board and its employees should:
- Work towards removing or minimising disadvantages suffered by
people due to their protected characteristics.
- Take steps to meet the needs of people from protected groups
where these are different from the needs of other people.
- Encourage people from protected groups to participate in public
life or in other activities where their participation is
disproportionately low.
Our aim is to uphold these aims and to close the gap in health
inequalities.
Single Equality Scheme (SES)
Public authorities such as NHS County Durham and
Darlington are required to produce equality and human rights
schemes. These are action plans setting out how a public authority
intends to comply with equality and human rights duties over a
three year period.
The single equality scheme for NHS County
Durham and Darlington sets out our commitment to taking
equality and human rights into account in everything we do, whether
that is providing strategic leadership to the local NHS, employing
people, developing policies, communicating, consulting or involving
people in our work.
Getting it right
To improve the work we do, we undertake
Equality Analysis (Due Reagrd) to ensure that we are
actively promoting equality. Our Equality Analysis provides details
of the assessments we've completed.
Equality Impact Assessments
See our framework for completing EIAs.
Based on this, our abridged template is used in
all policies and plans. Where assesmsnts are joint with partners,
an equivalent template is used. Please see below a range of
completed assessments:
See also policies and
procedures. Equality Impact Assessments are integral to
all policies as required in the Policy for Development and Approval of
Policies. All strategies are required to include an
equality impact assessment as outlined in the Policy for Strategy Development.
As a public body, we have a legal obligation to publish
information about the make-up of our staff by gender, ethnicity and
disability. Please view our Equality, Diversity and Human
Rights Annual Report 2011/11 to access this
information.
As well as staff information, as a public body we also have
a responsibility to publish information about healthcare services
and patients in NHS County Durham and Darlington. Please see below
a list of this information:
There is broad evidence of inequalities in health outcome by
equality group which can be found here . Although general
patterns are known, it is difficult to quantify for the local
population. See here for information
about communities in County Durham.
See here
for reports and case studies from our Patient Advice and
Liaison Service (PALS). See here for reports from our Complaints
service.
Pleaser note - all requests for individual funding are
considered using the agreed individual requests for exceptional treatment policy.
2012 Diversity Calendar
The 2012
Diversity Calendar is now available. Please feel free to
download. It includes all the important dates in
2012.