Equality and Diversity in Health and Social Care

Promoting inclusion, equality and diversity in health and social care can be easier for some services than others. However, this doesn’t mean that it can’t be done. Remember, being a diverse and equal provider isn’t an option, it’s essential.

Are you interested in learning how to promote equality and diversity in your service? This article has been created to help you understand the importance of equality and diversity and to provide you with the information and tools you need to promote it.

Both equality and diversity are essential components of health and social care. Good equality and diversity practices ensure that the services that are provided to people are accessible and fair to everyone involved, including service users and care providers. This helps everyone feel like they are treated equally and that they get the respect and dignity that they deserve.

Good diversity ensures that everyone knows that their differences are something to be celebrated, whatever your background, ethnicity or belief. Diversity enhances creativity and encourages the search for new, innovative perspectives and information. This leads to better problem-solving and decision-making, which can help improve the quality of your service while boosting its appeal.

Why is Inclusion Important in Health and Social Care?

Inclusion in health and social care refers to being an inclusive employer and helping people cared for to be more included in society. Being an inclusive employer is essential, as it helps people feel involved and empowered in the workplace. When people feel included, they will know that their worth will be recognised and respected.

Employees work and feel their best when they can be their authentic selves, whatever their ethnicity or beliefs. Being able to do so without being judged or cast out means they will feel more comfortable and are better able to contribute and bring ideas forward. Perspectives from completely different backgrounds can prove to be beneficial, especially in health and social care settings where care is provided to individuals who may have similar backgrounds.

Inclusion can also refer to being inclusive to all the different people you are providing care and support to, but also ensuring that people are included in their local communities, are able to maintain relationships and so on, in order to avoid social exclusion or social isolation.

Social isolation can lead to loneliness if it occurs. Which as we all now know can be long reaching negative impacts on both physical and mental health.

Social inclusion is all about relationships, including connections between staff and service users, plus their families, carers and the wider community. For service users, helping them to maintain strong relationships with these people and continuing contact with their loved ones will reduce social isolation. Another great way to reduce exclusion is to offer support when it comes to maintaining former interests and activities, as well as searching for new ones.

To ensure equality and diversity come naturally to your service, you must educate yourself and the entire workforce on the legislation, principles and practices that surround this area. You and all of your employees must be aware of the four laws that specifically relate to equality and diversity in health and social care. They are:

• The Human Rights Act 1998 – This legislation has five main principles: Fairness, Respect, Equality, Dignity and Autonomy. The Act outlines basic human rights and principles of equality.
• The Mental Capacity Act 2005 – This legislation was put in place to help people who are unable to maintain their dignity, independence and right to freedom. To help vulnerable individuals maintain their right to dignity and equality, The Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS) was put in place.
• The Equality Act 2010 – The legislation surrounds the topics of equality and diversity, covering all areas of society which includes health and social care. Covering all sectors, The Act works off the nine protected characteristics: age, disability, race, religion and belief, marriage and civil partnership, sex, gender reassignment and sexual orientation, pregnancy and maternity.
• The Care Act 2014 – This legislation underlines all work involving vulnerable adults. This includes helping adults give their consent for tailored support that is chosen by them.

It can be hard to get people involved in promoting and supporting it until a consistent level of understanding has been reached. Making sure you have a resourceful equality and diversity policy in place will help staff understand and comply with the aims. It should be mandatory to read this policy and participate in the appropriate training surrounding equality in health and social care.

Equality and diversity policies and procedures are included in Access Policies and Procedures. You can download a full catalogue of the policies included in the software, including our care home policies and procedures and domiciliary care policies and procedures.

Challenging Discrimination in Health and Social Care

If the above isn’t adhered to and people feel discriminated against, then they can legally take action against your service or an individual. There are four types of discrimination:

• Direct discrimination – Where an individual is treated differently by others due to their protected characteristics.
• Indirect discrimination – When a company puts a role or policy in place or an individual makes assumptions that could impact someone with a protected characteristic.
• Harassment – When people are treated in a way that violates their dignity or creates a degrading, humiliating, offensive or hostile environment.
• Victimisation – Where an individual is treated unfairly due to taking action under the Equality Act, or by supporting someone else who is doing so.

People can check if they have experienced discrimination by finding more information about the case. This can help them confirm their encounter and form a strong complaint. If you’ve experienced discrimination under the Equality Act, then you can take legal action against the discriminator, service or organisation. If the incident doesn’t fall under the Equality Act, you can make a formal complaint.

When people are discriminated against, it means that they are treated differently to others. Discrimination in health and social care is defined as a lack of consideration or negative actions towards an individual or a group of people all because of an unjustified, preconceived opinion. This could be towards members of staff or service users. Discrimination isn’t always unlawful, but it is illegal if it’s against the Equality Act (2010).

Examples of Discrimination in Health and Social Care

Examples of discrimination in health and social care include treating people differently due to their race, religion, sexual orientation or certain characteristics. It could even be something like excluding people who require wheelchairs by not providing them with access. While some forms of discrimination can be intentional, others can be unintentional or accidental. Understandable, these are often harder to see. 

When there’s a policy, practice, rule or condition that applies to everyone but at the same time, unintentionally singles out people with a physical or mental disadvantage, it’s classed as indirect discrimination. This is usually accidental and whoever made the decision or put the plan or policy in place often assumes that applying one general rule to everyone ensures that they’re all being treated equally. However, this isn’t always the case and could be due to this person having a lack of awareness, unconscious bias or a poor attitude towards equality and diversity.

Examples of Indirect Discrimination in Health and Social Care

In many cases, people’s culture, backgrounds or personal experiences can lead to them adopting certain perceptions and attitudes towards others without them realising it. Keeping this in check will prevent indirect discrimination. The following are examples of indirect discrimination in health and social care:

• Using identification systems or dress codes – could be a disadvantage towards Muslims who wear head scarves.
• Making a rule that requires all staff to work on Sundays – may trouble Christians who attend church on Sundays.
• Having a policy where all male and female patients or service users receive care from someone of the same gender – some people may feel more comfortable with the opposite gender and transgender people often want to be perceived by the gender they identify as.
• Serving meals to service users at certain times during each day without any flexibility – may not accommodate people who are fasting due to their religious beliefs.

People with different backgrounds, religious beliefs or cultures will likely have a different view of life compared to yourself. However, you should make an effort to remain respectful, open-minded and accepting of their points of view. And they should behave the same way towards you.

How to Prevent Discrimination in Health and Social Care?

Whether it’s against employees or service users, preventing discrimination in health and social care is completely doable. Whoever has been discriminated against must think about the outcome they expect and how fast they want to see results. In unlawful cases, they will need to consider speaking to solicitors, trips to court, gathering evidence and requests for compensation to name a few.

In both unlawful and accidental cases, the discrimination must be stopped and apologies made. The decisions that have been made to take action against the discrimination should be reviewed and the care service’s policies should be changed. This will help prevent a similar event arising in the future. One of the best ways to prevent discrimination even further is to regularly train and inform your employees about discrimination, how to prevent it and what they should do if they notice it in the workplace.