Our EDI Approach
Hampshire and Isle of Wight Integrated Care Board is committed to its public sector equality duty to eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment, victimisation and other conduct prohibited by the act, advance equality of opportunity between people who share protected characteristics and those who do not, and foster good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not.
Our approach will be to progress through the NHS Equality Delivery System and the LGA Equality Framework for Local Government using the four improvement models to benchmark progress and embed EDI into day-to-day business with a clear focus on Decisions and Governance; Data and Performance; Community Insight and Engagement; Workforce and Organisational Culture.
Equality Objective Context
In line with the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s requests that all ICBs were to make progress in setting their objectives across 2023 with the formal objective setting required by March 2024. Hampshire and Isle of Wight ICB chose in November 2023 to set an interim 4-part model, which has now been further developed into formal equality objectives.
The ICB’s 4-part model has been devised as a simple framework through which to develop a suite of EDI Objectives against 4 key themes.
- The themes have been developed based on EHRC Technical Guidance, Case Law Brown Principles, and with an eye on the NHS Equality Delivery System and EDI Improvement Plan, and Equality Framework for Local Government.
- The aim is to have a simple, and mutually intelligible, model to aid discussion internally, across the NHS system, and with public sector partners.
- In short, “due regard” to the Public Sector Equality Duty, the EDS, and the EFLG all involve using available data, insight from staff, insight from communities, evidencing how this has all been considered in decision making and developing the organisation and staff base to address any findings.
Decisions and Governance – this theme is concerned with ensuring organisational EDI objectives are set, monitored and developed, and that due regard is paid and evidenced in decision making.
Data and Performance – this theme is concerned with ensuring completeness and robustness of data sets and performance indicators, and that decisions making is informed by the most up to date and accurate information in relation to equality and inequality.
Insight and Engagement – this theme is concerned with ensuring that the contemporary views of patients and communities are used to inform decision making, resource allocation, and engagement activity; and that the ICBs engagement networks are inclusive of a diverse community.
Workforce and Organisational Culture – this theme is concerned with the need to develop a culture of belonging for all staff, addressing workplace inequalities, and building the capacity of the organisation to meet the needs of a diverse workforce and population.
It is our intention to continue to develop our equality objectives beyond the statutory 4 year review, with support and engagement from ICB staff, provider and partner colleagues and the community.
Hampshire and Isle of Wight’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Objectives:
1. We must ensure as an organisation we understand the impact the decisions we make have on protected characteristics and ensure we have robust system of stopping, mitigating and/or limiting negative impact prior to decision making.
To demonstrate this:
- We will have a robust Equality Impact Assessment process and standard operating procedure
- We will make sure All key decision-making groups, committees and their chairs commit to acting as Equality Impact champions to ensure decisions are made with equality in mind
- We will improve the correlation and working practices across Quality, Equality and Inequalities impact measurement
2. The organisation will ensure there are relevant and appropriate committees and subgroups in place to keep the board updated and aware of the progress made on the EDI and Inequalities agenda
To demonstrate this:
- Our Equality and Diversity Steering group will ensure regular reports are provided to EMG, Board, wider Senior Leaders Group as appropriate. (EDI Steering group). The EDI Steering group will meet regularly and review its Terms of Reference within12 months to ensure this is 'fit for purpose’
- We will, in line with our inequalities duty to promote integration and our aspiration to improve our understanding and development across Hampshire and Isle of Wight, the organisation will continue to work in partnership within the system, developing appropriate partnership and collaborative meetings/task and finish groups/committees/learning and development events to progress equality and experience across workforce and population
3. The organisation is committed to further understanding our workforce, community demography and experience
4. Utilising data, insights and involvement to close gaps in equitable experience and access
To demonstrate this:
- We will annually, gather, analyse and publish Equality information and subsequent actions plans, in line with NHS England and Equality Humans Rights Commission’s expectations:
- Workforce Race Equality Standard (inclusive, where applicable of Bank WRES and Medical WRES)
- Workforce Disability Equality Standard
- Gender Pay Gap reporting
- Equality Delivery System
- We will further develop systems and processes for reviewing reporting and learning from incidents -including experiences of discrimination, bullying/harassment and hate crime, this will also include the identifying of a key lead for incident reporting for the ICB
- We will continue to improving the quality of our data for population demography and workforce demography -insuring we meet, at least, our minimum requirements under Health Inequalities (age, gender, ethnicity, deprivation)
- All ofthe ICB’s board members (incExecutive, Non-Executive and Partner members) will have a specific and measurable objective related to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. This will be annually monitored to ensure progress is made.
5. As an organisation we are committed to developing our understanding of the community we serve and fostering good relationships to better experiences for all
To demonstrate this:
- We commit to supporting community wealth building and advancing the welfare of the population we serve through sizeable assets such as procurement, spending power, workforce, training, building and land use.
- We commit to producing a gap analysis of previously gathered insights with our communities demography to highlight who we don't hear from so we can reach out to these communities.
- We will use cultural celebrations and community events to build trusted relationships and understand needs of specific communities.
- We will diversify the membership of our Community Engagement Groups to become more representative of our communities.
- We will use the insights we gather to support our Equality Impact Assessments and use the information we have from our communities to better inform the decisions we make.
6. As an organisation we want to ensure our workplace is a safe and healthy environment for all, one that supports diverse belonging and opportunity and that recognises where specific focus and attention needs to be met with action tackling discrimination, fair and inclusive recruitment, effective and diverse talent management
- We commit to progressing the expected 6 High Impact actions and reporting progress outlined in the NHS England EDI Improvement Plan
- We aim to further our workforces understanding of population health and health inequalities here in Hampshire and Isle of Wight including the Health Inequalities of our workforce
- We will continue to progress and convene with system partners the Hate Crime workstream and its attributed actions including -Incident reporting, a culture of understanding and continuous learning and policies/procedures and practices that support and protect people when facing discrimination
- We will ensure our people policies and practices including recruitment, performance and disciplinary processes are fair and inclusive and perform periodic reporting on progress
- We will continue to develop the sharing of lived experience and fostering of positive diverse culture through our Lived Experience Library, Curious Conversations and Staff Networks
- We will seek to understand and address where there are gaps in our talent management processes against protected characteristics and seek to influence system wide solutions to progression and recognition
Equality Objectives Impact measurement
It is imperative that our objectives and subsequent action plans are measured on their effectiveness at improving the Equality agenda. Some of the measurements we expect to see a positive impact on are:
- Improved staff survey results (measured year on year) across both the specific WRES/WDES indicator questions and when analysing specific protected characteristic responses across the whole survey. Some survey improvements may include:
- Reduction in staff facing discrimination at work from both the public and other staff
- Where incidents happen an increase in reporting rates
- Increase in percentage of staff feeling the organisation acts fairly and inclusively
- Improved quality of Equality Impact Assessments and the ensuring that all EIAs that ‘should’ have been completed have been
- Increased confidence and competence in the reporting of discrimination incidents
- Improvements in demographic representation across protected characteristics
- Reduction of gender pay gap
- Increase attendance and support for Staff Network Groups
- Progress made against the NHS EDI Improvement plan high impact actions
Any EDI programmes, events and initiatives will be effectively evaluated for impact.