Read our latest report, a study of equality, diversity and inclusion outcomes for substance misuse services in Bristol for Bristol City Council and Bristol Recovery Orientated Drug and Alcohol Services (ROADS).
We make the following recommendations…
- ROADS providers to effectively engage with equality, diversity and inclusion training. In particular staff training and awareness sessions to ensure effective engagement and collection of equality monitoring data.
- ROADS, SMT and JCG ensure consistency in equality monitoring / data collection across the ROADS and Theseus systems; especially on gender identity and sexual orientation monitoring.
- ROADS to carry out focus groups with service users on equality monitoring; especially on gender identity and sexual orientation monitoring.
- Work to continue to ensure the gender balance in the workforce reflects the local population and the numbers of people in treatment. For example the male / female gender balance of workforce and the treatment population.
- Women in the ROADS workforce to be gender aware / mindful of the differing needs of men accessing treatment.
- Explore the wider variation in substance misuse demographics of service users in ROADS treatment and match by proportionate / representative workforce demographics.
- Further investigate why there has been a decline in numbers / lack of retention of BME staff in the workforce.
- Wider use of approaches like the Disability ‘Two-Tick’ system (ensuring that all applicants who disclose that they have a disability and meet all essential criteria) to be practiced among all service providers within ROADS to maintain this positive trend.
- SMT to consider building in the ‘Two-Tick’ system into the re-commissioning process.
- ROADS providers to continue to ensure that appropriate ‘reasonable adjustments’ have been made for disabled staff including how sickness and absences are captured and recorded.
- SMT to feed the data and information from this report into the needs assessment process.
Read the full report click here