Racism costs lives - NHS Lancashire and South Cumbria ICB stands united against racism
NHS Lancashire and South Cumbria ICB is proud to publish this statement setting out our commitment to become an unapologetically anti-racist organisation.
We recognise that racism is a significant public health issue. This means that we have a moral and ethical duty to do all we can to challenge and eradicate the oppression experienced by minority ethnic communities and proactively tackle the impact of racism on our patients, staff and resident populations in Lancashire and South Cumbria.
Furthermore, we know that NHS staff from minority ethnic communities are significantly more likely to experience discrimination, bullying and harassment, and experience disadvantage in recruitment and career progression as outlined in our annual Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES) reports.
As an ICB, we know that we face some challenges in our journey to become anti-racist. As of September 2024, the ICB employed a total of 881 members of staff with only 59 reporting coming from a minority ethnic background – this equates to only 6.7 per cent of our workforce. This is significantly lower than the resident population in Lancashire and South Cumbria which is currently estimated at 12.3 per cent. Furthermore, our 2024 ICB WRES report highlighted a clear under-representation of minority ethnic staff at Band 6 and above, and 9.4 per cent of minority ethnic staff told us they had experienced discrimination from their colleagues.
As part of our journey to become anti-racist, the ICB has a clear ambition to increase overall representation of minority ethnic staff across the organisation and work towards more equitable representation across each pay band.
Examples of specific actions we will focus on include:
- Implementation of inclusive recruitment processes and practices to increase the representation of minority ethnic staff across all pay bands in line with our annual WRES reports and action plans.
- In times of limited recruitment, we will focus on the retention, development and career progression of minority ethnic staff.
- Implementation of sponsorship, coaching and mentoring to enhance career progression opportunities.
- Providing support and development for our Race Equality Staff Network to ensure the voice of our people is heard and built into decision-making processes. This will include a focus on encouraging allyship to increase the capacity and influence of our network.
- Building competence, understanding and knowledge through cultural intelligence and anti-racism workshops, encouraging anti-racist role modelling and inclusive behaviours.
- Reviewing our policies and processes to embed a zero-tolerance approach to racism within the workplace environment.
Through collaboration with our ICB colleagues and ICS system partners, and with strong commitment and leadership from our ICB Board and our executive directors, we will take actions to ensure that anti-racism is positioned as mission critical in everything we do. As part of this approach, we are proud that all of our NHS system partners have committed to implementing the NHS North West BAME Assembly Anti-Racist Framework.
This anti-racist statement sets out our firm commitment to implementing meaningful changes to achieve race equity as an employer and as a commissioner of health care services. As part of that commitment, we will ensure that we hold ourselves to account and implement measures to monitor our progress towards becoming a truly anti-racist organisation.