Your Choice Barnet is committed to promoting equality and diversity, and our goal is to embed it into everything we do.

Equality

Equality is not achieved by treating everyone the same and giving a one-size-fits-all service. It’s about recognising that people have different needs that can be met in different ways.

Diversity

Diversity is about valuing the individual differences people bring to Your Choice Barnet. That could through race, gender, sexual orientation, religion or belief, disability, or any other characteristic that makes us who we are.

One of our organisational values is Responding to Individuals and this is exactly how we will carry out our equality and diversity work, by treating everyone as unique individuals and responding to their needs accordingly.

Why it’s relevant

Taking equality and diversity seriously is central to living our vision. It will improve the service we provide while ensuring we make the best use of resources, targeting them where they are needed; to make a positive difference to the individuals we serve.

Equality and Diversity of Your Choice Barnet service users

Your Choice Barnet is made up of six adult care services providing specialist care to adults with a range of physical and learning disabilities, ranging from visual and hearing impairments and to autistic spectrum conditions and people who need specialist care to live independently in the community. Service users ages range from late teens to 70s and are split equally in gender.

Our commitment and approach

We want to ensure services are provided fairly to everyone we serve and we are committed to ensuring Equality and Diversity are fundamental in how we provide services

Equality and Diversity is central to delivering our business plan goals of:

  • Support which enables our customers and service users to lead improved and where possible more independent lives
  • Value for money services that our customers and service users want

“This commitment is made clear through the publication of our Equality and Diversity Policy Statement and is brought to life daily in the behaviour’s and standards of all at Your Choice Barnet.

Our approach

We have employed an assurance and project based approach to equality and diversity which allows us to

  • Identify areas for priority focus and give staff the skills and tools to deliver compliant services
  • Monitor the impact of our services have on our customers and the greater population of Barnet
  • Identify and address equality gaps
  • Continually improve services and meet customer needs where we are able.

These actions help us to meet theĀ Equality Act 2010, which came into force in April 2011.

The Equality Act 2010 is the most recent piece of legislation which pulls together and strengthens all previous legislation. As a public sector organisation, to meet the Act and General Equality Duty we must where it applies

  • Eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation
  • Advance equality of opportunity between different groups
  • Foster good relations between different groups

Compliance with the Act must apply across the following protected characteristics: race, gender, gender reassignment, disability, sexual orientation, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, religion or belief and age. We also consider the impact on other groups, for example those on a low income or single parents

We will also work closely with Barnet Council and other partners to improve upon and deliver existing and new services to our customers in line with the aims and principles of the General Equality Duty. We also use the CQC guidelines to improve our equality position.

We carry out equality analysis on new high level policies and procedures, or when a policy or procedure is changed. These assessments ensure the different needs of the service users we serve are considered and are used to shape our policies and services, and that all activities endeavour to further the aims of the general equality duty.