Disability History Month at CLCH
CLCH is proud to be joining UK Disability History Month (UKDHM) from Thursday 18 November to Monday 20 December 2021 to celebrate and mark this important month. The theme for this year is Disability and Invisible Impairment. Disability History Month (UKDHM) is an annual event that serves as a platform for focusing on the history of the struggle for disabled people. It aims to focus on human rights and raise awareness of the unequal position of disabled people in society.
UK Disability History Month (UKDHM) has always been to:
• Advocate equality for disabled people
• Celebrate disabled leaders throughout history and their struggle for acceptance, equality and inclusion
• Examine the roots of disabilism - negative attitudes, harassment and hate crime
• Create greater understanding of the barriers in society
CLCH is proud to be a disability confident committed employer and part of the Stonewall Diversity Champion Scheme. We continue to demonstrate our commitment to inclusive employment practices and service delivery for LGBT+ staff, patients and service users. We are committed to delivering community health services where equality, diversity and inclusion is integral to, and embraced by all,.
We thrive on challenging stereotypes about disability, fostering an inclusive environment, and combating discrimination and harassment. The NHS Workforce Disability Equality Standard (WDES) is a data-based standard that uses a series of ten measures (metrics) to improve the experiences of Disabled staff in the NHS. The Trust’s 2020/2021 WDES report and action plans were released last month to help CLCH compare the experiences of disabled and non-disabled employees. Here are a few key findings that showed progress of disabled staff experiences:
• Staff satisfaction: The percentage of Disabled staff compared to Non-disabled staff who say that they are satisfied with the extent that their work is valued by CLCH is 41.2%, compared to 39.6% the previous year.
• Reasonable adjustment: The percentage of Disabled staff saying that their employer has made adequate reasonable adjustments to enable them to carry out their work is 79.3% compared to previous year (73.4%).
• Candidate recruitment: A relative likelihood of 0.87 (below 1) indicates that nNon-disabled applicants are less likely to be appointed from shortlisting compared to Disabled applicants. ,This is an improvement on the previous year where this was 0.98* times more likely.
• 75% of Disabled staff believed that the Trust offered equal opportunities for career progression
This year, we are commemorating Disability History Month by highlighting some of the steps we are taking to support employees and how we can all work together to make the workplace more accessible, especially in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. We are committed to addressing inequality every year by reviewing the National Workforce Disability Equality Standard (WDES) and developing an evidence-based action plan to track progress on disability equality.
Our Disability and Wellness Staff Network (DAWN) will be discussing a variety of key topics on people with visible and non-visible disabilities and impairments and chronic illness throughout the month, such as:
• Understanding disability rights and the different type of disabilities
• Promoting and highlight some of the inequalities and barriers
• How we can all work collectively to make the workplace more accessible
• How the Long COVID has affected people’s physical health and wellbeing in various ways
• Advice and support offer available at CLCH for staff
Our executive sponsor of the Disability and Wellness Network (DAWN), James Benson said: “In our daily work as a Trust, I would ask you all to consider how your vocation and values are directly evidenced not only in the way you support people in our care, but also our colleagues.”
To find out more about Disability History Month and how to get involved, visit: https://ukdhm.org/
