New guide to help organisations across Wales promote equality
A new leaflet to help health boards, NHS trusts and public sector organisations across Wales promote equality has been developed by the NHS Centre for Equality and Human Rights (CEHR).
The ‘8 Steps to Equality’ leaflet aims to provide simple guidance to support individuals and organisations to carry out successful equality impact assessments.
It brings together approaches and learning from a range of published information and explains each stage required for organisations to ensure equality is robust in a policy, service or a proposal for change.
Tracey Good, Interim Director of the CEHR, which designed the leaflet, said: “It’s so important that organisations carry out successful equality impact assessments particularly when looking at change, reviewing a policy or implementing a new service.
“There is a need to ensure a robust policy is in place, there is no potential for discrimination and all opportunities to promote equality have been taken.
“We hope that the 8 Steps to Equality leaflet will be a useful visual prompt for anyone involved in undertaking an equality impact assessment across the public sector in Wales and it’s aimed at those with all levels of knowledge about the process.”
The leaflet outlines the following important steps to ensure a robust equality assessment;
- Preparation – it’s important to fully understand the policy or service you are assessing
- Considering resources and relevance – how does the policy or service function in relation to equality duties
- Assessment of impact – consider the possible impact of the policy or service
- Recommendations – focus on fairness and make recommendations
- Consultation – ensure you consult widely on the policy or service
- Decision making – make a decision based on all the evidence and information
- Outcome report – write a report and publish assessment
- Monitoring – ensure effective monitoring is in place and reviewed regularly
The NHS Centre for Equality and Human Rights is a strategic resource for NHS organisations in Wales helping them to build capacity and capability to ensure they are able to meet their statutory equality and human rights requirements.
It also helps ensure organisations demonstrate they are meeting the diverse needs of patients and staff when planning and delivering health services and promote learning, collaborative working and best practice on equality and human rights.
Download 8 Steps to Equality here.
