They fuck you up, those NHS Boards do - with a nod to Philip Larkin

Just as you get to the end of the real news section of a broadsheet and you want to skip the classifieds, public notices, court circulars [why can't they be square?], lonely hearts, and announcements and get to the sports sections, something snares your eye.
It could be anything.  This time, for me, in early May 2012, it was a notice, barely the size of two postage stamps and probably using 8pt type size, and advising that the Board of NHS Health Scotland was due to meet later that month.  Anyone interested in attending should phone a named NHS Health Scotland staffer on a landline phone number.

That's what snagged my eye, and my mind.

And it is what pissed me off from the get go.

Two things you need to know.  I am hearing impaired.  Been losing my hearing since I was a 5 year old [just a few years ago].  Now I have no hearing on the right and seriously little left in the left.  Using landline phones does not always work for me.  Sometimes on a good day it does, other times it is as if I am in deep space and light years away.

The other thing is that NHS Health Scotland hosts a £million a year unit of staff dedicated to making sure the whole NHS in Scotland is accessible to all, complies with the Equality Act 2010 and the related specific equality duties.  Previous NHS Scotland Chief Executives have set the goal for the NHS to be more than compliant and to go beyond that and be exemplary.  Deaf and hearing impaired people have not suddenly sprung up like mushrooms.  The barriers to them being involved in the mainstream of society have been around for centuries.  Inviting us to contact public bodies has long been known to require more than a landline phone number.

I entered into an email based dialogue with the Chief Executive and his staff, starting off from the premise that NHS Health Scotland were discriminating against deaf and hearing impaired people and that given the needs of this community are not new or recent, there was something structurally, culturally and institutionally discriminatory at the heart of how NHS Health Scotland goes about its business.

They said it was not 'deliberate'.  They said they would change the notices in future to include an email address.  They said they would overhaul their processes and guidance on a meeting check-list.  They said they would 'note' a number of suggestions I had made.

Despairing of this bureaucratic attempt to construct and hide behind a smokescreen, I tried once more.

I suggested that whether or not the act of discrimination was deliberate was of no consequence and is certainly no defence in law. I questioned any signs of a real awareness in NHS Health Scotland that discrimination exists, that is deep rooted in the organisation and its staff, and is not something which can be removed simply by amending process. I pointed out that the process was, in the form of the check-list, already there – it was the staff who did not use it. Simply and only adding to process will not eliminate the discrimination.

I also pointed out - ‘noting’ my comments on impact assessment and ‘bearing my observations in mind’ signals no real or urgent commitment to eliminating the discrimination I have identified, and the NHS Health Scotland equalities cupboard is not only bare but cobwebbed when it comes to ideas and action to tackle the institutional discrimination in the organisation through its people as opposed to tinkering with process. It is deeply disappointing to realise that.

I remain entirely dissatisfied with the attempts of NHS Health Scotland to deal with the core issues I have raised and indeed some of the original questions remain unanswered. In light of that sustained failure there is little point in formally complaining for two reasons – firstly, there is no sense offered that NHS Health Scotland welcomes change required to eliminate discrimination. Secondly, the invitation to consider a formal complaint was made in the complete absence of guidance from NHS Health Scotland on precisely what process would be followed in handling any such complaint. The message is quite clear – I would be wasting my time.

I concluded - I am formally requesting NHS Health Scotland to take into account as evidence the substance of my representations on discrimination in how Board meetings are organised and that the principles involved in that failure of NHS Health Scotland should be addressed as part of the setting of Equality Outcomes required of NHS Health Scotland in complying with the specific equality duties. I formally request notification from NHS Health Scotland if it decides not to set an Equality Outcome which will deal with and evidence removal of the forms of discrimination I have identified.

At no time in all of this did NHS Health Scotland indicate that it understands it discriminates, that it accepts that it discriminates, that it will openly admit that it discriminates, or that it even cares that it discriminates.  All of these corporate mindsets are required before you can do real work in eliminating discrimination.  If you think it is OK to make deaf or BME people drink from a different water tap than that used by hearing or non-BME people, then you are unlikely to be able to work out how to end that discrimination.  If you are looking to the national NHS equalities resource in Scotland to deliver equalities, it looks as if deaf people are going to be born, live and die before the NHS mainstreams disability equality in the most simple of situations.