We need to ask you about yourself so we can ensure that we deliver the services fairly and to meet your needs. This is called monitoring. What you tell us about yourself helps us to identify any disadvantage you may have and plan services to meet your needs.
Although you put your personal details on forms, it is only sections on race, sexual orientation etc. that are used for monitoring and they don’t identify you. There are strict laws (Data Protection Act 1998) to make sure that we protect the information we collect and deal with it responsibly.
Equality monitoring also helps us to meet our statutory duties under the Equality Act 2010 by helping us eliminate discrimination, harassment and victimisation, promote equality of opportunity and foster good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not.
We give this information to the people providing our services so they can make changes to improve those services.
When you give information about protected characteristics, rest assured that it will only be used to make things better. When we use the data we won’t know it’s you!
For example: The number of people who do not attend their appointments is sometimes higher in areas where English is not the first language. By sending appointment letters in the patients own language the service is more accessible.
- NHS trusts in Merseyside are working together to raise the importance of equality monitoring. We want to ensure that our services are delivered fairly and this helps us to identify any disadvantage associated with age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage/civil partnerships, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation. It helps us to plan improvements to our policies and services in relation to people with these protected characteristics. Without monitoring, it is hard to know whether our policies and services are being delivered fairly or meeting the diverse needs that people have. Equality monitoring helps us to meet our statutory duties under the Equality Act 2010 by helping us to: eliminate discrimination, harassment and victimisation, advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not.
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Wherever you go, people want to know about your background so that they can get things right for you. So where does the information go? We will use this information to direct services and also see where the take up is. This cannot happen without your help!
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Equality monitoring information has been used in local NHS trusts in Liverpool to address a low success rate through the recruitment process for 50+ disabled people and people who defined themselves as BME. A pre-recruitment programme has been set up to assist people with recruitment skills such as completing application forms, interview techniques and understanding the NHS.
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Monitoring data has been used to understand the different experiences within inpatient facilities between men and women - looking at length of stay and admission resulting in new ways of targeting health information and support for discharge relevant to gender.
- You will complete forms with personally identifiable information but sections on race, sexual orientation etc. will always be processed separately. Your personal information is about you – the rest is statistics! We want to have over 90% complete data on all of our service users and staff.
- There are strict laws (Data Protection Act 1998) to make sure that we protect the information we collect and deal with it responsibly. We want you to feel confident that we will keep the information that you give us confidential and use it to make improvements to services. However, it is important that you know why we are collecting personal information and that you are confident that any data we hold about you is stored confidentially and securely.