Inferior equality training provided for most NHS Scotland staff - institutional discrimination remains deep rooted.

Changing the status quo is never easy.  The natural instinct of those in charge of the status quo is to keep things as they are because it invariably means life is comfortable for them and people like them.

Several decades ago laws were introduced and work started on what is now commonly termed 'equality', triggered by a number of issues around overt racism in the UK.  That anti-racism work has been going on since then and growing to encompass work aimed at ending discrimination experienced by disabled people, women, lesbian, gay and bisexual people, Catholic people and others.  While in those intervening decades we have witnessed how we have the capacity to create huge change - from mobile phones to pictures of the surface of Mars - it seems that no matter how much effort we put in to 'equality' the same people continue to remain exiled, through discrimination, to living on the very margins of what we call society.

In an effort to understand why we have collectively failed to change the status quo, I looked at how employers trained staff in how they could help the employer change and eliminate discrimination in how they functioned.  I thought NHS Scotland would be a good sample of the public sector to examine and sent all of Scotland's 22 health boards a Freedom of Information request and focusing on critical aspects of how they trained their workforce in 'equality'.  You can read the research report here.  There are quite a number of revelations.

One of these is the focus of this blog.

When asked how the equality training was delivered most Health Boards indicated they used a mix of e-modules and classroom settings.  Two Health Boards [Grampian and Orkney] were unequivocal - they used what they called 'face-to-face' training.  Those Health Boards explained :

"All of our Equality and Diversity training is delivered “face to face”. Research done by another Health Board and followed up by NHS Grampian and NHS Orkney has shown that “face to face” training is vastly superior to e-learning in this field for a number of reasons"

If we accept the position of NHS Grampian and NHS Orkney - that their face-to-face method of training delivery is 'vastly superior to e-learning' - then it is reasonable to conclude that much of the equality training delivered by the other 20 Health Boards in Scotland is vastly inferior.

Jeane Freeman, Cabinet Secretary for Health

Is this single issue the reason why NHS Scotland seems unable to pull up the deep roots of institutional discrimination which are in evidence from the employment data the Health Boards publish on a regular basis ?  I have sent a copy of the research report to the new Cabinet Secretary for Health and invited her comment on the superior/inferior delivery of equality training across NHS Scotland.