Trust Equality Objectives
Under the Equality Act 2010 the Trust must develop and publish Equality Objectives at least every four years. Equality Objectives have to be measurable. On this page you will find information about the Trusts Equality Objectives, how these were decided and what we plan to do in 2012 to 2013 to help achieve these objectives.
How we decided our Equality Objectives
- We were involved in ‘stakeholders’ event in March 2011, at this event some equality objectives that could be shared with other NHS organisations were agreed.
- We have started to look at our NHS Equality Delivery System grading and discussed this in a Workshop which was held in February 2012. We used information from the workshop to help us identify priority areas.
- We looked at the information which we published in January 2012 about people who work for the Trust and people who use Trust services who are from groups Protected by equality legislation.
- We discussed what our priorities should be in the Trusts Equality and Human Rights Steering Group
- We looked at the Trusts strategy to make sure that the Trusts Equality Objectives link to this.
Equality Objective 1
We want to improve the information we have about Patients in protected groups and improve how we use this information.
Why we have chosen this objective
When we started to look at the information we have about people who use our services we found we had good information about some groups (for example the age and sex of patients) but not others. We also found this when we did our NHS Equality Delivery System grading.
How we will know we are making progress and action we will take in 2012 –2013 to support this objective?
By the 31st of March 2013 we hope to have a good picture of gaps in information about patients in protected groups and we plan to have an action plan in place to improve how information is collected.
Equality Objective 2
Share Equality Objectives with other local Health and Social Care organisations
Why we have chosen this objective
We have agreed two Equality Objectives that we can share with other health organisations. The reason we have done this because we can achieve more by working together in these two areas.
Area 1 – We plan to look at the information we have and identify actions to improve the health of people who share protected characteristics and who may experience poor health for other reasons such as poverty.
How we will know we are making progress and action that will we take in 2012 –2013 to support this objective?
By the 31st of March 2013 we hope to have an agreement in place to share equalities information for example with other health organisations and Sheffield City Council.
Area 2 – We plan to increase awareness of what equality means for patients across health organisations
How we will know we are making progress and action we will take in 2012 –2013 to support this objective?
By the 31st of March 2013 we will have produced resource templates based on patient stories.
Equality Objective 3
Find out if patients in some protected groups do not attend appointments more often, have delays in discharge from hospital and spend longer in hospital.
Why we have chosen this objective
We wanted to find out if patients from some protected groups might be disadvantaged in accessing and using our services.
How we will know we are making progress and action we will take in 2012 –2013 to support this objective?
By the 31st of March 2013 we will have looked at information we have broken down by age, sex and ethnicity and reviewed this to identify any differences for these groups compared to others. If differences are found we will agree action to find out the reasons for these differences.
Equality Objective 4
To have as much information as possible about staff in protected groups who work in the organisation and use this information to set annual actions and targets
Why we have chosen this objective
When we started to look at the information we have about staff who work in our organisation we found we had good information about some groups but not others.
How we will know we are making progress and action we will take in 2012 –2013 to support this objective?
By the 31st of March 2013 we will have improved the information we have about staff by protected group and we will have started to develop systems so that managers and teams can use this information.
