Equality

We are committed to treating people fairly with compassion, respect and dignity and in promoting equality and human rights as a provider of mental health services and as an employer.

We aim to put this commitment into practice by:

• Providing the best possible mental health care services we can by making sure our services are accessible and deliver equally good experiences and outcomes for all people especially in relation to the characteristics protected by the Equality Act 2010. These are age, disability, ethnicity, gender reassignment, pregnancy and maternity, religion and belief, sex and sexual orientation
• Embedding our commitment to tackling inequality, eliminating discrimination and harassment; promoting equality of opportunity and fostering good relations in our decisions, policies and everyday practice
• Regularly monitoring and reporting on our public sector equality duty performance, equality objectives and on equality impact assessments to evaluate how we are doing and what we can do to improve
• Ensuring that all our services and all staff working on our behalf understand and support our commitment to eliminating discrimination, promoting equality and fostering good relations and put this into practice in everything they do
• We believe that people who use our services, their carers and our staff should be treated with compassion, respect and dignity. This means we will not tolerate any form of prejudice or discrimination against service users, carers, staff or our members.

Our equality objectives for 2023-2026

We have developed new equality objectives to replace the Integrated Equalities Action Plan (IEAP) that ends in March 2023. These are aligned with the core goals of the organisation to support delivery of equity within the Trust’s strategic ambitions.

Our equality objectives for 2023- 2026 are:

Trust-wide Service Delivery objectives:

1. Outstanding Care: Reduce inequity in use of restrictive practices.
2. Right Care: Reduce inequity in Mental Health Act (MHA) detentions.
3. Partner in Prevention: Reduce inequity in waiting times.

Trust-wide Workforce objectives:

1. Culture of Trust: Improve representation of ethnic minority staff in senior roles.
2. Culture of Trust: Reduce overrepresentation of ethnic minority staff in disciplinary proceedings.
3. Culture of Trust: Improve the career progression of disabled staff.

We will report equality objective progress to the Quality Committee and People, Culture and Communities Committee twice a year (in November and May) and once a year to the Board in July.

We will publish annual progress reports and our Equality Objectives Outcome Framework for 2023 on our website to show what changes have been achieved and explain what we’ll do next.

Our Integrated Equality Action Plan for 2021 to 2023 was approved by our Board in March 2021. This infographic explains what the IEAP is. 

The plan focuses on six overarching equality objectives, as well as Directorate equality objectives.

Service delivery equality objectives 

1. Improving access and experience of care for our Black service users
2. Reduce ethnic variation in the use of restraint and reduce restraint in absolute numbers.
3. Improve care and reasonable adjustments for service users with Learning Disabilities and Autism to reduce the use of restraint.

Workforce equality objectives 

1. Improve representation of BAME staff in senior roles.
2. Reduce the overrepresentation of BAME staff in disciplinary proceedings.
3. Improve the career progression of disabled staff.

Directorate equality objectives 

1. CAMHS: Improve access to CAMHS borough community services for Asian and Black young people
2. Croydon and BDP: Improve access to virtual reality motor mechanic training for BAME service users in the Forensic Assertive Rehabilitation Pathway
3. Lambeth: Improve care to Black service users on the Leo inpatient ward by implementing the “Trusted Friend” project
4. Lewisham: Improve access to DIALOG interventions in the Primary Community Mental Health Service for BAME service users
5. PMOA: Improve access to Memory Services for BAME service users
6. PMOA: Improve access to psychological therapies for BAME mothers in perinatal teams
7. Southwark: Improve access to psychological therapies to Black males in Southwark Community Mental Health teams

IEAP Equality Outcome Framework

The 2021-23 IEAP Equality Outcome Framework sets out what the equality objectives aim to achieve and how the outcomes will be measured. We have produced a 2021-22 IEAP mid-year progress report to show what progress we made in the first six months of 2020-21.

2021-22 IEAP mid year progress report 

2021-22 IEAP end of year progress report

2022-23 mid-year IEAP progress report

2022-23 IEAP end of year progress report

We are committed to treating our service users and employees fairly with compassion, respect and dignity. Equality analysis helps us understand the needs, experiences and outcomes of different staff and service users so we can put this commitment into practice. We use a tool called an Equality Impact Assessment (EIA) to do this.

Equality Impact Assessments

An EIA is a way of analysing the way a policy or service change will affect equality and people with different protected characteristics.

Why we use equality impact assessments

Using EIAs helps improve our understanding of the needs and experiences of different staff and service users. This helps us make fairer decisions, better policies and improve our services. It also helps have greater consistency in the way we do this across the Trust.

The public sector equality duty requires us to have due regard to the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination, advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations in all relevant day to day business. Using EIAs helps us comply with this law.

When we use equality impact assessments

We use equality impact assessments when:

• Developing new policies or reviewing existing policies
• Considering service developments
• Developing our other plans and strategies
• We are required to implement a decision over which the Trust has no control. For example a change in funding that may have been decided elsewhere but still requires us to consider mitigating measures or alternative ways of doing things to minimise the impact on services and equality

How the equality impact assessment process works

The equality impact assessment process has three steps:

1. Assess whether the policy, practice or decision is relevant to equality
2. Assess what the equality impacts of the policy, practice or decision are (if relevant to equality)
3. Produce an action plan to maximise positive and minimise negative equality impacts of the policy, practice or decision

Equality Impact Assessment template (PDF)

Equality Impact Assessments for policy development

We use equality impact assessments when developing or reviewing policies.

View our policies and procedures