Welcome to our Equality and Diversity section. This section contains information about our commitment to ensuring that our patients, visitors and staff are treated fairly and have equal access to services and opportunities regardless of the nine characteristics protected by the Equality Act:

  • Age,
  • Disability,
  • Gender reassignment
  • Pregnancy/ maternity,
  • Marriage/ civil partnership
  • Race
  • Religion/ belief
  • Sex
  • Sexual orientation

Our general duties

As a public sector organisation, Yeovil District Hospital is statutorily required to ensure that equality, diversity and human rights are embedded into all our functions and activities as per the Equality Act 2010, the Human Rights Act 1998 and the NHS Constitution. In all aspects of our business we will have due regard to the need to working towards achieving the general duties set out in the act:

  • Eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation and other conduct prohibited by the Equality Act 2010.
  • Advance equality of opportunity between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not.
  • Foster good relations between people who share protected characteristics and those who do not.

This means that we should work towards removing or minimising disadvantages suffered by people due to their protected characteristics; Take steps to meet the needs of people from protected groups where these are different from the needs of other people; and encourage people from protected groups to participate in public life or in other activities where their participation is disproportionately low.

Specific duties

To allow us to achieve the general duties the following specific duties must be achieved:

  • Publish Information showing that the 3 aims of the General Duty have been considered
  • Publish evidence of equality analysis undertaken
  • Have clear Equality objectives
  • Publish details of engagement undertaken

Equality, Diversity & Inclusion 3 year plan 21-24

Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES)

With effect from 1 April 2015 all NHS organisations must implement and report against the Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES). The WRES requires organisations to demonstrate progress against a number of indicators of workforce equality, including a specific indicator to address the low levels of BME Board representation. Annual reports are required, the first of which was published on 1 July 2015 “Benchmark Report”.

WRES report and action plan 2020/2021

Workforce Disability Equality Standard - WDES

The Workforce Disability Equality Standard (WDES) is a set of specific measures (metrics) that will enable NHS organisations to compare the experiences of disabled and non-disabled staff. This information will then be used by the relevant organisations to develop a local action plan, and enable them to demonstrate progress against the indicators of disability equality. The WDES is important because research shows that a motivated, included and valued workforce helps to deliver high quality patient care, increased patient satisfaction and improved patient safety. The implementation of the WDES, anticipated in 2019, will enable NHS Trusts and Foundation Trusts to better understand the experiences of their disabled staff. It will support positive change for existing employees, and enable a more inclusive environment for disabled people working in the NHS. The WDES will allow us to identify good practice and compare performance regionally and with other Trusts.

WDES report and action plan 2020-2021

How will we achieve this: Working towards the Equality Delivery System?

The Equality Delivery System (EDS) is a tool that has been developed by the NHS for use by organisations that commission and provide NHS services. We will use the EDS in partnership with patients, the public and staff to review our equality performance and to identify future priorities and actions.

The EDS consists of four goals – two for patients:

1. Better health outcomes for all

2. Improved patient access and experience and 2 for staff:

3. Empowered, engaged and included staff

4. Inclusive leadership at all levels

The goals are underpinned by 18 outcomes which are more specific questions/statements about how we provide our services and work with our staff to achieve equality in these for everyone regardless of the nine characteristics protected by the Equality Act.

Yeovil District Hospital’s Report & Objectives 2014-15 provides an update on what we are doing/ going to do to continue achieving the EDS outcomes. Within the report we have set out the following for each outcome providing evidence on how we are performing, overall and for people with protected characteristics, and how our patients and staff are involved and engage in decisions that we make.

We have graded ourselves on progress and also set out some key areas for how we think we can improve. These will be put into an action plan for us to work on over the coming year(s).

As part of our legal obligations and to inform our work within the EDS we have also published information about our patients and our workforce: please click the following links to access these reports or see above in the relevant sections:

Archived documents:

Watch our diversity video

We are extremely proud of the variety of nationalities that work at Yeovil Hospital. Check out this fantastic video, (made by two of our very talented staff), to hear more from our international hospital community about working at Yeovil Hospital.