Case Study - Leeds Partnership NHS Foundation Trust

Background

Championing Diversity was a West Yorkshire wide programme offered to employers to help them develop their management of diversity. This included an assessment of the company’s progress to date and extensive help over 18 months to move them in the direction they wanted to be in the future.

The Organisation

Shaping the organisations into ‘Champions of Diversity’ in their industry, the programme worked with Caroline Bamford, Head of Diversity at Leeds Partnerships NHS Foundation Trust to develop their approach to diversity. Leeds Partnerships NHS Foundation Trust provides specialist mental health and learning disability services to over 572,000 adults within the Leeds metropolitan boundary. Service users are at the heart of the organisation and they constantly strive to provide the best possible care and support, working closely with related organisations to provide effective, accessible and modern mental health and learning disability services. Working in partnership with local communities, their core purpose is to improve the mental health and well being of the people of Leeds.

Impact “The Diversity Driver process has given us a base line to focus activity in a meaningful and inclusive way in relation to diversity and social inclusion.”

What did we do?

• Developed a Diversity and Social Inclusion Forum. Open to staff at all levels within the organisation, service users’ carers, community partnership organisations and governors/non-executive directors who have an interest in supporting the development of the diversity and social inclusion agendas within the Trust. The initial meeting focused on how the forum should be developed in order to make it meaningful and identify priority focus areas- feedback from which, will form the terms of reference for the group. • Interactive group work undertaken to gain feedback in relation to a Quality Strategy within the Trust will be developed into a series of questions for the Trusts Executive Team and their responses will be discussed at the next Forum Meeting. • The forum will influence the communication process and strategic direction in relation to diversity and social inclusion. This will improve the depth and impact of communication about the role of diversity amongst team/board/governors and what diversity actually means within the Trust. • Fully interactive, job specific training around Diversity will promote the sharing of learning and best practice amongst the various teams. Feedback to date has been very positive, and this model is being rolled out further within the Trust. • Bespoke diversity training has been implemented for particular staff groups (catering, cleaning, transport), who had expressed concerns following the consultation, about undertaking diversity training on-line. The training was developed to ensure it was fully inclusive and took into account any learning requirements e.g. literacy and numeracy etc • Improved the use of Equality Impact Assessments (EIA) in order to make them more user friendly and meaningful. The next Forum meeting will take place with the HR Team and be an interactive session which will enable staff, service users, carers and community partners to raise questions in relation to current processes for consideration and feedback from the HR Team at a subsequent meeting

What did we learn?

The forum will influence the communication process and strategic direction in relation to diversity and social inclusion. This will improve the depth and impact of communication about the role of diversity amongst team/board/governors and what diversity actually means within the Trust. Fully interactive, job specific training around Diversity will promote the sharing of learning and best practice amongst the various teams. Feedback to date has been very positive, and this model is being rolled out further within the Trust.