https://www.gosh.nhs.uk/about-us/diversity-and-inclusion/

Diversity and Inclusion at GOSH

Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) is committed to promoting diversity and inclusion amongst all our staff, stakeholders, service users and patients – fulfilling our obligations under the Equality Act 2010 and the Public Sector Equality Duty.

We are committed to embedding inclusion in everything that we do, but more specifically:

  • How we recruit and support the development and career progression of our staff
  • How we proactively engage and support all our patients particularly given the diversity of our population and service users

We know that a diverse and inclusive workforce can help us to develop new ways of thinking leading to improvement and innovation in the way we work. For us, it is vital that all colleagues are treated fairly and are enabled to reach their full potential. We are dedicated to eliminating discrimination, valuing diversity and promoting equality of opportunity, to build and sustain an inclusive environment to deliver and receive care.

We are proud to be a Disability Confident Employer and have active Race, Ethnicity and Cultural Heritage (REACH), The Pride Network, Enhancing Abilities and Leveraging Disabilities (ENABLED) and Women’s staff networks.

Please do read our Seen and Heard 2022-2023 for more information.

The Equality Act 2010 provides a legal framework to protect the rights of individuals and ensure equality of opportunity for all. We have general and specific responsibilities known as the ‘public sector equality duties’.

The general equality duty requires us to meet the three aims of the Act. These are:

- Eliminating unlawful discrimination, harassment, victimisation and other conduct prohibited by the Act;

- Advancing equality of opportunity between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not

- Fostering good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not

Specific equality duties: To assist public authorities in meeting the three aims of the general duty, specific duties were introduced. Meeting the specific duties provides the public with the information they need to challenge and hold us to account for our performance on equality.

The specific duties require us to:

- Publish annual equality information to demonstrate compliance with the general equality duty

- Prepare and publish one or more specific and measurable objective that we think we need to achieve to further any of the aims of the general equality duty

Full details of the public sector equality duty are available on the Equality and Human Rights Commission website.

The Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES) was introduced by NHS England and the NHS Equality and Diversity Council in 2015. The WRES was developed as a result of evidence that NHS staff from a Black and Minority Ethnic backgrounds (BME) have a poorer experience at work and have less opportunities than their white colleagues. Implementation of the WRES is a requirement for all NHS Trusts. The WRES is a key component in how organisations measure their work to deliver tangible and lasting interventions to race equality and inclusion, as well as supporting how, as a Trust, we deliver on our obligations under the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED).

In 2018 the Workforce Disability Equality Standard (WDES) was launched to in the NHS to improve the experiences of disabled staff working in and seeking employment in the NHS. This work is a fundamental part of our diversity and inclusion work and understanding how it affects our staff is hugely important to us.

The gender pay gap is the difference between the average (mean or median) earnings of men and women across a workforce. Organisations with a headcount of 250 or more on their ‘snapshot date’ must comply with regulations on gender pay gap reporting. Gender pay gap calculations are based on employer payroll data drawn from a specific date each year. This specific date is called the ‘snapshot date’. We will publish our gender pay gap annually to understand the size and causes of our pay gaps and identify any issues that need to be addressed. Publishing and monitoring the gender pay gap will help us understand how effective our actions are in reducing it.