We are dedicated to creating a culture of belonging and supporting our diverse service users, colleagues and communities.

We’re on a journey with our equality, diversity and inclusion work and recognise there are areas of improvement which we continue to work on.

Equality, diversity and inclusion is something we think about in everything we do. We are constantly holding a mirror against who we are, and challenging behaviours and attitudes to embed meaningful actions which make change. This is everyone’s business, in every role across our organisation. 

Recent events have sadly shown that racial injustices still exist within our society. The murder of George Floyd and the events which followed, and the disproportionate impact of covid on our Black, Asian and minority ethnic population has highlighted that racism is poisoning our society, process and systems.

Now is the time to take action. We can’t sit back and simply do nothing. 

We published our anti-racist statement and our transgender and non-binary statement, to reinforce our zero tolerance approach to discrimination with no room for neutrality.

  • Challenging poor behaviours, attitudes and the status quo to make a difference
  • Becoming an anti-racist organisation, as mentioned in our anti-racist statement 
  • Improving our recruitment practices to appoint diversity from our local communities
  • Educating, supporting and raising awareness of equality, diversity and inclusion
  • Supporting our staff networks to continue to develop and thrive and ensure your voices are heard
  • Working on advancing mental health equalities across our populations 

Racism exists in every corner of our society and the NHS is not immune to this. We know racism is in all processes and procedures and we must root it out.

Racism does not have a place in our organisation. We will challenge poor behaviour, eradicate, and challenge incidents of discrimination, victimisation or harassment based on a person’s ethnicity. We have a zero-tolerance approach to such behaviour and will take all necessary action to protect our diverse workforce and service users from such poor attitudes.

In 2020 we became the first NHS trust in the North West to publish an anti-racist statementpublicly pledging our commitment to become anti-racist.

We know we’re not perfect. We’re on a journey with our equality, diversity and inclusion work and continuously hold a mirror up to ourselves, educate ourselves, and challenge both ourselves and others.

Anti-racist framework and action plan

Evelyn Asante-Mensah OBE, our chair, is also the chair of the North West Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) Advisory Group, providing a strategic steer and guidance to organisations on this important agenda of work.

The group published its anti-racist framework providing guidance to embed meaningful actions to drive change. We have now developed our action plan in response to this framework, which outlines what we intend to do as an organisation to improve. Read our anti-racism action plan.

Anti-racist survey

Earlier this year we were the only NHS organisation in the country to launch an anti-racist survey. The survey was developed and managed by the external analytics company Flair. It aimed to understand the experiences of our black, Asian and minority ethnic colleagues and recognise how all colleagues dealt with poor behaviour in the workplace.

The survey ran from 14 March until 8 April, consisting of 25 questions focused on four key themes:

  • Racial diversity - how comfortable do employees feel in responding to racism that witnessed
  • Racial inclusion barriers - to what extent do employees feel their ethnicity is blocking them from accessing key drivers of inclusion
  • Racial awareness - how much are employees witnessing and being subject to: racist jokes, racial microaggressions, racist harassment and racial discrimination
  • Racist behaviours - how ethnically diverse is the workforce in comparison to the local population

The survey took 12 minutes to complete and was shared widely via our internal communication channels, emails from network directors and executive directors, briefing packs, staff meetings and a video from Evelyn (our chair). Nearly 800 colleagues completed the survey, around 22% of our overall workforce.

View the full results of the survey and read what we intend to do in our ‘you said, we will’ approach, which was shared with colleagues.

As a public sector organisation, we have a statutory duty to ensure that equality, diversity and human rights are embedded into all functions and activities. This is required by the Equality Act 2010, the Human Rights Act 1998 and the NHS Constitution. 

Here are some of the ways we monitor how we're doing:

Health inequalities are unfair and avoidable differences in health across the population, and between different groups within society.

Health inequalities can impact anyone. Reducing health inequalities is a key task for us and something we are committed to undertaking. It requires meaningful, effective actions to be implemented. 

The Centre for Mental Health have produced a mental health inequalities factsheet with some more information on this.

Our board, alongside our head of equality, diversity and inclusion, are looking into the development of a health inequalities strategy, to outline the challenges we face and how we will ensure equitable support and access for all.

We have signed up to the ‘advancing mental health equalities’ national resource, developed with the Royal College of Physiatrists and NHS England and NHS Improvement. This allows us to work with targeted portions of the population, embed innovative approaches and strategies, and reduce mental health inequalities.

Work is also continuing in building relationships with community networks, forums and groups. If you are interested in any of this work, please email pcn.tr.equalitydiversityinclusion@nhs.net

Read our health inequalities board paper for more information on the work we're doing.

We have a number of staff networks, including Race Equality, LGBTQ+, Positive Ability, Multi-Faith, Women's, and Men's Wellbeing networks, to challenge us and help us constantly improve.

Visit our staff networks page to learn more.