What is the Equality Delivery
System?
The NHS wants to make sure that everyone it helps is treated
fairly. We want to make sure that people are not treated less well
because of:
- Religion or culture
- Age
- If you are a man or a woman (sex)
- Where you live
- Mobility
- Disability
- Who your boyfriend or girlfriend is
- If you are having a baby.
We think that it is important that our services are fair to
everyone. To help make this possible the NHS has introduced the
Equality Delivery System (EDS). The EDS is designed to support NHS
commissioners and providers to deliver better outcomes for patients
and communities and better working environments for staff, which
are personal, fair and diverse. The EDS is all about making
positive differences to healthy living and working lives.
The EDS is a tool for both current and emerging NHS
organisations - in partnership with patients, the public, staff and
staff-side organisations - to use to review their equality
performance and to identify future priorities and actions.
The EDS goals are:
- Everyone will have the help they need to get better
health.
- It will be easy for everyone to get good support with their
health.
- Staff are happy at work and services support our staff to do a
good job.
- Managers will help the service to get things right.
Is it about people or processes?
The EDS focuses on people. It provides a tool to help
organisations can be the best they can be for their patients and
staff. It can be used to support commissioners identify
local needs and priorities, particularly unmet needs of
seldom-heard populations, and allow them to shape services around
people's specific circumstances, and so help to deliver better
outcomes. The purpose is to provide a tool that can be used to help
make evidence-based decisions taking into account all relevant
facts and matters.
Equality Consultation
Across the North East region we have asked local people, groups
and staff i.e. why each of the different protected characteristics
is important, why the NHS should take the protected characteristics
seriously and what key messages need to be considered. The outcome
of this Equality Consultation is available here. A video is
also available here.
An easy read version of this consultation report is available here
Key documents
The Equality Delivery System for the
NHS: Making Sure Everyone Counts
The Equality Delivery System for the
NHS Grades Manual
See the background
to the Equality Delivery System.