Introduction

Welcome to our Annual Equality Report 2021-22 

This report shows what we have achieved and where we  need to continue climbing towards equality in our mission of  excellent care at the heart of the community. 

Our equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) programme delivers our workforce strategy commitment for thriving staff to be inclusive, diverse, and fair, and supports the aims of our clinical strategy to improve patient and carer experience and to address inequalities within population health.

The report has seven sections: race, religion and belief, gender (including pregnancy and maternity), sexual orientation, disability, age, organisational inclusion, and care equity. The first seven sections report on equality of opportunity within employment and the last section on equality of opportunity within services (care equity).

  • Each section begins with our key achievements to advance equality, including fostering good relations
  • There are then key findings, which include measures of equality, in particular representation, access, utilisation, and experience
  • There are measures of our work to eliminate discrimination and harassment
  • Each section ends with key next steps to address the findings over the coming year

This report evidences compliance with our specific equality duty (Equality Act 2010), our duty to publish gender pay gap information and our publication obligations relating to the workforce race equality standard (WRES) and the workforce disability equality standard (WDES).

The report does not report on areas where fewer than 20 staff have supplied information to preserve privacy, except where specified. Care equity data is from patient administration systems and incident management systems. Equality in employment is based on data from electronic staff records, staff surveys, human resources information systems, and the Trust's recruitment management system, TRAC.