Workforce Race Equality Standard - Race and Disability

Workforce Race Equality Standard

The Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES), introduced by the NHS Equality and Diversity Council (EDC) for all NHS Trusts and Clinical Commissioning Groups came into effect on 1 April 2015. This was in response to ‘The Snowy White Peaks’ a report by Roger Kline which provided compelling evidence that barriers, including poor data, are deeply rooted within the culture of the NHS.

The WRES is a mandatory requirement embedded within the NHS Contract to ensure effective collection, analysis and use of workforce data to address the under-representation of Black Minority Ethnic (BME) staff across the NHS. It will require the Trust to demonstrate progress against nine standard indicators specifically focused at Race equality.

Workforce Disability Equality Standard

The WDES was commissioned by the Equality and Diversity Council (EDC) and developed through a pilot and extensive engagement with Trusts and key stakeholders. It is mandated through the NHS Standard Contract. All NHS Trusts were required to submit their first year’s data by 1st August 2019 to NHS England. Following this, results must be published to the Trust website action plan developed to address any discrepancies.

Ten evidenced based metrics, not dissimilar to the WRES, will enable NHS organisations to compare the experiences of disabled and non-disabled staff. This information is to be used to develop local action plans designed to enable demonstrable progress against the indicators of disability equality.

Monitoring Progress

The Trust Inclusion Working Group (IWG) is responsible for developing action plans and reporting outcomes to the Board, who will monitor and scrutinise progress against the WRES metrics. Both Aspire, the BME staff network ,and Enable, the disability and Carers network groups will be kept up to date on progress along with staff side and key stakeholder groups.

The WRES has clear links with the Equality Delivery System 2 (EDS2) which also became mandatory for NHS Trusts, including CCG’s from April 2015.

South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust is committed to tackling race discrimination and creating an NHS where the talents of all staff are valued and developed – not least for the sake of our patients.

Our Annual Report on the Workforce Race Equality Standard and Workforce Disability Equality Standard 2019 highlights our progress against both sets of metrics and identifies the areas we will be focussing on over the coming year.

Our results from previous years can also be found below;

For further information, please contact Asmina.Ichowdhury@secamb.nhs.uk or tel: 01737 364428 or 07795 236 554.

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