We are committed to developing meaningful Equality, Diversity and Inclusion – focusing on the needs of our colleagues, patients and all connected to the Trust. This is central to how we deliver our care and services and support people.

Our vision is to achieve equality and value diversity for all our employees. Everybody is to be treated with dignity and respect; and we aim for our workforce to be representative of the population we serve and the wider community from which we recruit.

Our equality objectives:

  • To create and publish easily accessible workforce and patient / service user E&D profiles reports
  • To embed equality and diversity in to the existing People Strategy and Clinical Services Strategy; this should reflect the needs of both employees and patient/service users in the community
  • To provide assurance of the implementation of the E&D agenda for CRH

We must act to fulfil our obligations and the pledges set out in the NHS Constitution, Equality Act 2010 (especially the public sector equality duty) and Human Rights Act 1998.

We will therefore:

  • Publish relevant, proportionate information showing our compliance with the Equality Duty

  • Publish information about decision-making and the equality data which underpins those decisions
  • Be accountable to our service users and communities
  • Give the public the information they need to hold public bodies to account for their performance on equality

Commitments to Equality and Diversity

Click on the drop-down accordions below to read about the different ways we put equality and diversity into practice within the Trust.

We are signed up to the British Deaf Association’s BSL Charter, to demonstrate our commitment to equality for Deaf people.

By signing the BSL Charter, we have pledged to:

  • Consult with our local Deaf community on a regular basis
  • Ensure access for Deaf people to information and services
  • Promote learning and high-quality teaching of British Sign Language
  • Support Deaf children and families
  • Ensure staff working with Deaf people can communicate effectively in British Sign Language.

Chesterfield Royal Hospital NSH Foundation Trust successfully renewed its certification as a Disability Confident Employer in 2019.

This means that the Trust is continuing to take all of the core actions to be a Disability Confident employer. We also agree to take at least one action to 'get the right people for the business' and at least one action to 'keep and develop our people' as described on the Disability Confident Employer page on the gov.uk website

We have signed the Armed Forces Covenant. This commits us to support all of those in the armed forces community who have contact with the Trust whether as patients, staff, carers or the general public.    

The covenant focuses on helping members of the armed forces community have the same access to government and commercial services and products as any other citizen. This support is provided in a number of areas including:

  • Education and family well-being
  • Having a home
  • Starting a new career
  • Access to healthcare
  • Financial assistance
  • Discounted services.

In 2018 we signed up to the TUC’s Dying to Work Voluntary Charter, which aims to help employees who become terminally ill at work. The Trust is committed to supporting any colleague who becomes terminally ill. Through signing the charter we hope to raise greater awareness of this initiative across our workforce, partner agencies and local communities. We will also seek to ensure we are doing all we can to support colleagues who receive a terminal diagnosis while working for the Trust.

We are proud to have pioneered the Reverse Mentoring for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (ReMEDI) programme.

Reverse Mentoring is when an employee in a senior position is mentored by somebody in a more junior position. The purpose of the programme is to promote awareness of equality, influence meaningful understanding and lived experience of our staff from different groups and improve the workplace experience of our staff and the services provided to our Trust’s patients.

We recognise that the Trust has a diverse workforce, and that we have a duty to provide equal opportunities to all of our employees without bias or discrimination regardless of their race, ethnicity, gender, age, religious beliefs, disability or sexual orientation.

We currently have the following employee networks, each with an executive sponsor from our Board of Directors:

  • Our Armed Forces Network
  • Race Equality and Cultural Inclusion Network
  • DAWN (Disability and Wellbeing Network)
  • Be Yourself Network
  • Carers' Network

These networks offer colleagues a safe place to receive support, advice and encouragement about work-related issues. They also serve as forums to exchange views and experiences and raise concerns. Their aim is to improve working lives, promote diversity and raise the standard of the services we provide.

More information about our Staff Networks can be found here. 

Equality Information

The drop-down accordions below provide details about equality information within the Trust.

Our Workforce Demographics report provides a detailed analysis of our workforce by the REGARDS characteristics: Race, Ethnicity, Gender, Age, Religion, Disability and Sexual orientation.

The report shows how representative our workforce is in comparison to the local population. It also contains an in-depth look at a wide range of workforce metrics by protected characteristic, such as service area, salary band, staff group, applicants for jobs, performance management, grievances, dignity at work cases, redundancies and leavers, and staff development (training).

Our 2022 EDI Annual Report can be found here. 

 

The Workforce Disability Equality Standard (WDES) is a set of ten specific measures (metrics) that enables NHS organisations to compare the experiences of disabled and non-disabled staff. NHS organisations use the metrics data and local data to develop a local action plan. The metrics also enable NHS organisations to demonstrate progress against the indicators of disability equality. Learn more on the NHS England website.

The WDES report and action plan is a live document and will be monitored and updated to ensure the actions remain effective.

All NHS organisations are required to demonstrate through the nine-point Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES) how they are addressing race equality issues in a range of staffing areas. The move follows reports which have highlighted disparities in the number of BME people in senior leadership positions across the NHS, as well as lower levels of wellbeing amongst the BME population.

Please note that the WRES report and action plan is a live document and will be monitored and updated to ensure the actions remain effective.

Since the Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties) Regulations 2011 came into force on 10 September 2011, there has been a duty for public bodies with 150 or more employees to publish information on the diversity of their workforce. The government made gender pay gap reporting mandatory by amending the SDR so that all public sector employers with more than 250 employees have to measure and publish their gender pay gaps.

View information about our Trust's gender pay gap in previous years on the gov.uk website. Here you can also search for information about other public sector organisations.

To request any information on equality and diversity that isn’t available here, please contact our E, D and I Team.