How we're committing to equality, diversity and inclusion

Our National Committee scrutinises our delivery against this plan to help ensure we meet our objectives and live up to the commitments we’ve set. 

We’re committed to embedding equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) across our work. On this page, you can learn more about the steps we’re taking – in our current business plan, our long-term strategy, and the values we aim to promote through our work.

Why equality, diversity and inclusion?

People face avoidable, unfair differences in their healthcare and the way ill health affects them, depending on location and their demographics.

Last May, we published our updated strategy for 2023-2026, “Our future focus”. We made clear our commitment to focusing on people who face these disadvantages, explicitly reflecting this in the first of our strategic objectives:

 “To support more people who face the worst outcomes to speak up about their health and social care, and to access the advice they need.”

Our plans

To create change for the most disadvantaged in society, we’ll embed EDI across all areas of our work. 

1. We’ll keep designing our research, policy and communications work to bring about change on EDI-related issues.
2. Make sure our evidence base focuses on demographics and geographic spread, accurately reflecting the communities we represent.
3. Involve more people from affected communities in our work and form partnerships to help make change happen.
4. Make sure our communications are accessible and successfully reach marginalised audiences.
5. Support local Healthwatch in building the skills and evidence they need to challenge local health and care decision-makers to improve EDI.
6. Foster a workplace culture that promotes and embraces EDI and demonstrates best practice around equity.

You can read about the approach we’re taking to EDI in our plans for 2024-26.

Support for local Healthwatch 

We’ll promote the work local Healthwatch are doing on EDI. We’ll share good practice so all local Healthwatch can identify issues with health inequalities in their area, and carry out work to highlight and address these. 

We’ll prioritise tackling inequalities, and support local Healthwatch to keep tabs on how local services are implementing the revised Accessible Information Standard.

We’ll include EDI in learning and development opportunities for local Healthwatch stagg. And we’ll make sure we have a clear understanding of their demographics, letting this inform the way we support them.

Policy and research

We’ll prioritise support for people with the most significant and complex needs, as well as tackling issues that affect the entire population.

This includes a renewed focus on women’s health issues, ensuring we continue to consider protected characteristics such as ethnicity, gender, age, sexuality and disability and the intersectional nature of the factors that lead to inequalities.

We’ll run a project on ADHD and autism services, report on the unmet needs of disabled adults in England, and campaign for national reform and investment in social care, working with organisations like ADASS, Age UK, Disability Rights UK, and others.

We’ll also complete ongoing projects on diagnostic hubs and cervical screening. And we’ll continue to campaign against the downgrading of NHS mail by Royal Mail, which would disproportionately affect older people and those from low-income backgrounds.

We’ll shine a light on inequalities throughout care with our insight pieces. And through all of our work, we’ll involve more people from affected communities, and form partnerships to help make change happen.

Communications

In our communications approach, we will use channels and partnerships to reach diverse audiences. 

We’ll continue to ensure that our national communications are accessible to the communities we serve, and support local Healthwatch to do this as well. We’ll also review our communications strategy and work with the CQC to increase feedback from those facing inequalities. 

We’ll work to make sure the right people hear that feedback, too. We’ll launch a professional campaign to encourage a culture of listening in the NHS, with a focus on health inequalities. And we’ll support the communication of what we learn to professionals and the public. 

Workplace culture

We aim to demonstrate exemplary practice when embedding EDI in our culture.

So we’ll start from the beginning, reviewing our recruitment processes to make sure we attract a diverse range of candidates, and promoting vacancies via channels that people from communities we see fewer applications from use.

We’ll continue to provide comprehensive training for all employees, including management and the leadership team, to foster an inclusive environment. We’ve also reinforced our commitment through a refresh of our organisational values, listing Equity as the first of the values that inform all our approaches:

“We will embrace inclusivity and compassion, establishing profound connections with the communities we serve, and empowering them.”

We’ll evaluate the effectiveness of the Equality Impact Assessments we apply in our project planning and work, and improve them where necessary. And we’ll ensure a deep understanding of the demographics of our workforce and address where we have under- or over-representation of groups.

Digital

We’ll set a vision for our digital and data programme that will enable those facing the greatest barriers to providing feedback to share their experiences with us.