Inclusion at the time of COVID-19

Standard Operating Process for Management and COVID (2020/21)

Risk assessments for our staff was spotlighted in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. A lot of work was undertaken by providers/trusts, ICS/STP and other bodies. This document brings together the basics of risk assessments, the legal framework, governance and recommendations for standard operating procedure. This is usual to anyone who would like to make continuous improvements and support ongoing work on risk assessment compliance and support for our colleagues in the NHS.

Vaccination Programme in the South East

Vaccine hesitancy among some ethnic groups and marginalised communities has been highlighted as a public health concern by national healthcare advisers. It is always helpful to hear from our staff about the challenges faced, so we can all contribute to best practice and keeping our patients, staff, families, friends and communities safe. These two videos aim to help our staff to understand some of the issues surrounding vaccine hesitancy and why it is important to have an equality perspective when speaking to staff/patients/other stakeholders about our national vaccination programme. It is important to have the voice of those who are directly affected, and we are grateful to Dr Abdul Oredola and Evelyn Falaye for sharing their experience. Click the links below to watch their videos.

BAME vaccination hesitancy (2020/21)

Communicating our current and future vaccination programmes to our diverse population groups is critical to inflating current health inequalities and ensuring we keep a close watch on wider population health.
This document is specifically for anyone interested in framing interventions to reduce concerns about vaccination programmes, especially the current COVID-19 vaccination roll out. Historically, our BAME population groups – staff, patients and other stakeholders, have been harder to reach when it comes to medical interventions and healthcare improvement programmes.
We hope this simple guidance can go some way to supporting improvement in the area.

Vaccination: race and religion/belief (2021)

The importance of monitoring vaccination literacy, uptake and engagement has been highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Along with the Government, various arm’s length bodies involved in health and social care have sought to put measures in place, and processes, to gain engagement from marginalised groups to keep communities most at risk, and the wider population safe. This document provides and overview of the work undertaken along with a summary of resources.  

Experience of NHS South East Staff during COVID-19

COVID-19 staff survey, October 2020

The South East EDI Team launched two surveys in 2020 to give voice to BME staff and their daily experiences. It helped inform support on PPE access, fit-testing, risk assessments, wellbeing and speaking up. This is a summary of our findings. It shows that the situation for staff improved between June 2020 and October 2020, particular with regard to access to PPE, however, our BME staff remain under considerable economic and psychological pressure. We hope you find this document useful to support you in designing interventions for BME staff and those who support them, and to consider additional work that needs to be done with EDI Leads, BME staff networks and staff side.