Equality and diversity

NHS Hertfordshire is committed to ensuring that everybody, irrespective of their gender, age, disability, race, colour, nationality, ethnicity, religion or sexuality should have equal access to services and services should, as far as possible, be sensitive to their individual needs.

We are also committed to ensuring that our workforce is able to respond fully to the needs of all our patients. To help us to achieve this, our staff need to reflect the diverse communities they serve as this can contribute significantly to equitable access to, and appropriate and sensitive services.

Take a look at some of the links to find out more about how NHS Hertfordshire is positively promoting equality and diversity amongst our staff and patients.

NHS Hertfordshire will be working with all other NHS Trusts in the county over the next year to implement a new Equality Delivery System (EDS) to improve the way in which people from different groups are treated as service users, carers and employees. The EDS will be used in every NHS organisation in England which means that wherever you go for NHS services you will find organisations working to the same set of goals around equality & human rights. Read more

NHS Hertfordshire has published this document to comply with the statutory duty to publish information annually to demonstrate our compliance with the Equality Act 2010 general equality duty in relation to both our employees and people who are affected by our policies and commissioned services..

Under the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) of the Equality Act 2010, NHS Hertfordshire has developed equality objectives for 2012–2013.

The purpose of setting specific, measurable equality objectives is to help us to meet the general equality duty, focusing on the outcomes to be achieved and have been agreed in partnership with local people, communities and staff.

The development of the equality objectives will be aligned to the business of the organisation and the Equality Delivery System (EDS) goals and outcomes.

We have heard from many of you recently that you want to be more involved in shaping local health services and making sure that they are better tailored to meet the needs of a diverse range of people. We want to talk to you more about how we can improve local services for people based around age, disability, ethnicity/race, gender, gender reassignment, pregnancy & maternity, religion & beliefs and sexual orientation. But we also want you to have more power – in the future - in holding local services to account for things that they should be doing for local communities. The new NHS Equality Delivery System (EDS) will help us do this better and give you more control over the services you receive. Including GP’s, Hospitals, Mental Health, Learning Disability, Ambulances and any other local health service. Read More