The Equality Delivery System (EDS2) is an NHS England standard that requires NHS organisations to show how they are improving outcomes for people who share protected characteristics as defined by the Equality Act 2010.

The EDS2 programme is designed to support commissioners and providers to work with local partners and people to deliver better outcomes for patients and communities.

The four EDS2 goals are:

1. Better health outcomes
2. Improved patient access and experience
3. A representative and supported workforce
4. Inclusive leadership

We have been using the EDS2 to help us to review and improve our equality and engagement performance for people with characteristics protected by the Equality Act 2010

We worked collaboratively with our main Provider York Teaching Hospital Foundation Trust to assess and grade our progress against the EDS2 goals and outcomes and held a joint event.

During this event we focused on EDS2 goal 1 – better outcomes for all and asked stakeholders to assess and grade our joint progress against these outcomes.

This identified that we needed to focus on understanding the needs of our Lesbian, Gay Bisexual and Trans (LGBT) community and those with a disability.

Engagement and the Equality Delivery System(EDS2)

Through our engagement, we are focusing on goals one and two – better health outcomes and improved access and patient experience. On this page you can read lots of examples of the work we carry out with groups and people with protected characteristics.

Improving services for children with Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) - July-October 2020

Laura Brown (Local Offer and Participation Officer, CYC) and Victoria Binks (Head of Engagement, CCG) planned and facilitated four training sessions in July 2020 (including an evening session) and two sessions in September and October to explore the understanding and perception of co-production and to establish a common definition of co-production and model of co-production for York. The sessions looked at addressing the key challenges and successes young people may face, and facilitated discussion around how to embed co-production within everyday activities.

• Click here to view the SEND Communication and Engagement Strategy August 2020
• Read the co-production training report here.
• View the co-production training session slides here.

Ensuring that we hear the views of our seldom heard community about what they do if they have an urgent medical need.  

As part of the urgent care engagement work, we are committed to ensuring that we represent the views of our diverse population. During the covid-19 pandemic, although we were unable to host face-to-face engagement sessions, we worked with Healthwatch York and North Yorkshire and the voluntary sector to access seldom heard communities, including some of the most vulnerable people in our population with multiple and complex needs. 

 
Healthwatch York conducted a number of interviews and worked with Door 84 (youth centre), the Good Organisation (supporting people affected by homelessness), Lifting Voices up York, York CVS and the Complex Needs Network. It also used its links with youth groups and spoke to those who were receiving welfare checks. As part of the covid-19 impact survey we held telephone interviews with the Carers Centre, Dementia Forward, advocacy services for deaf people, York Mind, carers and people with disabilities and mental health conditions.

View the full Healthwatch report on people's understanding of urgent care.

Work with our LGBT+ community:  October 2019

Healthwatch York produced a report about LGBT+ experience of accessing health and social care and the barriers they face. This report highlights that a quarter of the participants said they had experienced barriers to accessing health and social care services, over half felt reluctant to disclose their  sexual orientation or gender identity and a third had experienced negative attitudes when accessing services. There were several recommendations linked to increased training and awareness on the subject.

As a result, and though areas identified from the EDS2 action plan we have:

• Brought in Yorkshire MESMAC to run a series of awareness raising sessions to over 45 people. We invited Healthwatch, Public and Patient Voice Partners and PPV carers, GP practices – October 2019
• Adopted the rainbow badges - an initiative that gives staff a way to show that we are open, non-judgemental and inclusive towards our colleagues, partners and our population who may identify as LGBT+. 48 members of staff signed a pledge – October 2019
• Work with a local GP to review the transgender pathway review and improve experience for patients.
• Committed to rolling out training at our Protected Learning Time events in July 2020.

For more information about our LGBT work click here.

Helping maternity service users to have their say: September 2019

The York District Maternity Voices Partnership (MVP) is a group which comes together to ensure that maternity service commissioners, NHS Vale of York CCG and the local maternity services hear and take account of the views of women and families using the service. However, members of the group didn’t feel that the meetings encouraged service users to attend as they were at inconvenience times and not in child friendly locations.

Through the appointment of the new lay chair Emily, the sessions are now held in family friendly locations. The first meeting in September took place in a community venue in York and Emily encouraged service users to come along with their children. We asked mums and their families what went well during birth and what could be improved and this is fed back into the maternity service. The group is now open to members of the public and aims to improve services for women and their families during pregnancy, birth and postnatal care. For more information on our Maternity Voices Partnership click here.

Smoking while pregnant: September - November 2019

The proportion of women who smoke at the time of their delivery is greater in York than any of York's statistical neighbours, and has recently risen above the national average for the first time in five years. This is an important indicator because smoking throughout pregnancy can harm the growth and development of infants and can affect their development in early life.

Through the MVP we worked with community midwives in some of the most deprived areas of the city, with the highest smoking while pregnant rates, to ask mums what would help them to quit smoking. This information will help inform the Public Health Team's approach to stop smoking services for women who are pregnant. Read the report and find out more information here.

Hearing the voice of the young person

Engaging with young people with a disability: January 2020

In January 2020, in partnership with the City of York Council, we spoke to a group of children aged between 11 and 18 about what health means to them. As part of the 'Access for all' session we took along some nurses from the hospital and talked about what it is like to access healthcare from the point of view of a young person with a disability.

Some of the feedback was as follows:

• 'We want quiet places',  'we get bored easily - its' good if there is internet'
• 'better food'
• 'can people speak more slowly when they introduce themselves'
• 'staff are friendly - I like that'
• 'sometimes I don't understand what they are saying' ' 'sometimes they talk to my mum instead of me'.

As a result we are working with the hospital to arrange a site walk around with these young people, so they can show us what works well and what could be better.

Student health campaign

We wanted to find out how students and young people find out about health services. We went into York College during fresher’s week (September 2019) and their winter health and wellbeing day (December 2019) to talk to students about what would make a health campaign attractive.

Many students said they would notice adverts and advice through social media. We will be using this feedback to deliver some targeted campaigns.

Young people who have a mental health condition: July 2019

Young Minds Combined: North Yorkshire and youth council have joined together to work on mental health.  In July 2019 a seminar was held, bringing young people and commissioners (NHS Vale of York CCG) and providers together to discuss key issues for children and young people. Key themes around mental health champions, online access and equity of services were discussed.

What have we done? As a result we have committed to whole pathway commissioning transformation project to address equity, commissioned and implemented Kooth for online access for 11-18 age group and rolled out Mental Health Champions in York.

Improving experience for wheelchair service users: November 2019

In November 2019 we held a wheelchair service user forum to provide a unique opportunity for people to share their experiences with other service users, clinicians, commissioners and the providers; NRS healthcare. We are committed to use this forum to involve service users in the monitoring of the contracts and service improvements in the future. Read more about the work we are doing with our wheelchair forum to improve service user experience.  On this page you will see a 'you said, we are doing' document to show how we are working with the wheelchair service providers to improve patient experience.

In addition we attend the North Yorkshire Disability forum twice a year to provide updates about our work and the gather feedback about improvements that can be made within health.

Working in partnership with our Learning Disability community

All Age Learning Disabilities Strategy: October 2019

Members of the CCG attended the launch of the All Age Learning Disabilities Strategy for York. It aims to set out the Partnership’s four priority areas in including education/life-long learning and employment, independent living, participating in society and being as healthy as possible.

This strategy is the opportunity to help make York a fully inclusive City for people with learning disabilities and their families/carers. It has been coproduced by people with learning disabilities and their families/carers, together with the voluntary sector, education, health commissioners and social care. Click here to view the document.

Ageing well communities: May 2019

In May 2019 we supported the North Yorkshire Public health team in their project to find out what helps make an ageing well community. Age UK helped to bring people to an event held in a local community centre in Selby. Over 30 people from rural towns and Selby came together to provide valuable insight into what helps people age well. Our Head of Engagement facilitate the tabletop discussion about health and best methods of communication.

Other steps we have taken to ensure that our public involvement work ties in with EDS2 have included and equality and diversity strategy action plan, reviewing the way we provide information to the public, and training and updating processes for our staff.

Creating accessible documents and information

We know that not everyone likes receiving information the same way. We try to provide information in alternative formats for our population in order to reach the widest audience possible across the Vale of York.

We particularly use our relationship with our Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) networks to help distribute important messages to underrepresented areas of our community.

You can read about all the different methods we use to update our population and gather feedback here.

Training for staff

We have designed a toolkit to provide our staff with resources to help them to assess the level of public and patient involvement that is needed within any project large or small. This helps our staff and volunteers to consider public participation and equaly and health inequalities within a project right from the outset.

View the engagement and equality impact assessment planning tools here.

Assessing quality, engagement and equality

NHS Vale of York CCG uses a quality and equality impact assessment (QEIA) tool to assess and measure the potential impact of proposed service changes or reviews, as well as the need for patient and public involvement.

The QEIA enables our staff to follow a simple process to carry out a quality and equality impact assessment at the start of any project.

Read more about our approach to assessing quality and equality.

EDS2 and linking to our Equality, Diversity and Human Rights Strategy and action plan

Our Equality, Diversity and Human Rights Strategy 2017-21 sets out our commitment to taking equality, diversity and human rights to account in everything we do. In particular there is a key link between the Equality Delivery Standard (EDS2) and how we will deliver this through engagement.  View our Equality, Diversity and Human Rights Strategy 2017-21.