Service Level Agreement with NHS Leicester City

Meeting this morning at St John's House, East Street, with Abida Hussain, Equality and Human Rights Officer with Leicestershire NHS Partnership Trust. We're discussing the Service Level Agreement with Leicester Council of Faiths. It took us a long time to get this agreement, now we're looking at pieces of work that need to be done before the end of the current financial year. Most relevant among these is a booklet which addresses needs of patients and their families when individuals of diverse backgrounds first present for examination or treatment. It coves some of the standard topics for this sort of publication (diet, dress code, modesty, end of life care) but in a very succinct form (and, in this "field trial" version, on laminated, wipe-clean pages). There are many versions of this sort of thing out there, of course, but more often than not, they're over-complicated with much too much information in them. Sometimes, you can't see the wood for the trees - and those compiling such guidance them don't know where to stop, as they're often fearful that the thing they omit will be the thing that catches them out!

I'll be helping bring it up to date, ensure an accurate list of local contacts, and import whatever learning may be relevant from other projects, such as the booklet series, "Engaging with Faith Communities in Leicester".

my management group

At the Welcome Centre this morning for a meeting with my Personnel Management Group. Although our Chair, Manjula Sood, has to offer her apologies for this meeting, still we have the benefit of a diversity of backgrounds, traditions in the members here today: Bahá'í, Christian, Jewish, Sikh. Major topics on our agenda today include: National Inter Faith Week; working relationships with Leicester City Council, Leicester Partnership and NHS Leicester City; our venture further into social media; involvement in writing the booklet series, "Engaging with Faith Communities in Leicester"; engagement in the developing Centre of Excellence in Community Cohesion. That's a lot to fit into two hours - exhaustingly so!

Annual General Meeting

Our Annual General Meeting this evening in the Council Chamber, Town Hall. I'm in here an hour beforehand, to set up our exhibition banners. Although we've had this for almost a year now, this evening will be the first time that many members of the Council of Faiths will have seen it up close.

The theme of our guest speakers this evening is "Faith Communities and Health". First up is Maqsood Ahmed, Director of Inclusion, East Midlands Strategic Health Authority. Maqsood began his presentation by reflecting on his experience of equality and inequality in his personal and professional life. He shared the benefits of his current experience of working with the NHS in the East Midlands. He commented on the central role of religion or belief in recent legislation establishing equality and the role of faith communities in relation to "Big Society". He identified as a major challenge for the NS the need to  engage the Voluntary and Community Sector on behalf of patients, partly with the purpose of holding the NHS to account. He said that Leicester is ahead of the game in terms of community engagement and can export good practice to other parts of the East Midlands (and further afield) as exemplified in the policies and practices of our Council of Faiths. He expressed concern about future development of the NHS in general and, in particular, the necessity of assuring diversity of representation on commissioning boards. He raised the topic of relations between faith communities and the forthcoming GP consortia and bodies like Healthwatch. He described how equality and diversity is not an issue about minorities, but about the majority of the community, no matter their race, religion or other characteristics.

I'm sure that each time Maqsood mentioned the Equality Act he prefaced it with the word "ghastly". This is the second time I've heard him address a meeting and I thought he did this last time too. I intended to ask him if I were hearing him correctly and what he meant by that, but he left before I was able to do so.

Deb Watson, NHS Leicesrter City Director of Public Health and Health Improvement, officially launched the "Faith Communities Health Champions" initiative, on which I've been doing some work since she and her deputy, Rod Moore spoke to a full meeting of the Council of Faiths earlier this year.

Deb (centre left) and Maqsood (centre right) are holding the form on which attendees were invited to come forward to be involved in the "Faith Communities Health Champions" initiative. To the left is Councillor Manjula Sood (Chair of Leicester Council of Faiths), to the right, Fayyaz Suleman (Secretary).

EDP monthly meeting

We get hardly a quarter of an hour after the REDP meeting finishes at 1230 then we're into the regular monthly meeting of the Equality and Diversity Partnership. For this expanded meeting we're joined by Saeed Malek, representing Age Concern, as well as colleagues from the public sector Leicester City Council (Irene Kyszk, Head of Equalities), Leicestershire Constabulary (Lynne Woodward, Head of Diversity), Leicester City NHS (Abida Hussein, Diversity Officer). Our main topic of conversation is the expansion (in role and, possibly, in the membership) of EDP in its work with Leicester City Council and the Local Strategic Partnership. Jai Parmar and I have to leave early to make our way over to Voluntary Action Leicester to join in the first session of a working party to help formulate a volunteering strategy for the city and county.

IMPROVING STANDARDS OF CONSULTATION AND ENGAGEMENT: 2

To Leicester Town Hall at lunchtime for the second meeting of a Task and Finish Group on Improving Standards of Consultation and Engagement across Leicester Strategic Partnership. Among those attending on behalf of bodies involved with the Local Strategic Partnership, there are representatives of the City Council, Leicester City NHS, University Hospitals Leicester (UHL), Leicestershire and Rutland Probation Trust, Leicestershire Constabulary, Voluntary Action Leicester, I'm there on behalf of the Equality and Diversity Partnership (EDP) as well as flying the flag for Council of Faiths of course.

This piece of work is intended to improve the level (and kind) of consultation processes entered into by all the member organisations that comprise the Local Strategic Partnership - well, the public sector organisations at least, since those from the private sector have unanimously declined to take part. In terms of the Voluntary and Community Sector, we're making input as participants in the consultation and engagement processes as well as beneficiaries of the outcomes. Our boards (where we have them) are being invited to sign up to these documents too.

Something different from the first meeting: we started discussing the use of social media for this project, how to apply Facebook, Twitter, blogging ("Hel-lo-oh!") to making it a success. Leicester City Council has a twitter account, but we were told that the most recent tweet was a month ago. The City Council has 30 followers; Council of Faiths has 32! In this context, we discussed future involvement of Citizens' Eye Community News Agency and Leicester on the Map, possibly from the beginning of the public consultation stage.

improving standards of consultation & engagement (1)

To Leicester City Council (B Block, New Walk Centre) at lunchtime for the first meeting of a Task and Finish Group on Improving Standards of Consultation and Engagement across the Partnership. There's a cross-section of people representing different bodies involved with the Leicester Strategic Partnership: City Council, Leicester City NHS, University Hospitals Leicester (UHL), Leicestershire Constabulary, B-Inspired, Voluntary Action Leicester, I'm there on behalf of the Equality and Diversity Partnership (EDP). We're discussing ways to tighten up processes by which service users in the city are informed, consulted and engaged on the various aspects of work being done on their behalf. There's a genuine acknowledgement of the need to pool experience, knowledge and resources (for obvious reasons), to cut through the opacity of beuraucratic language and to make everything as user-focused and user-friendly as possible. We jump over one of the early items on the agenda - election of a Chair - and decide to use the short time we have together today actually to do some work. We set ourselves a tight deadline of having everything finished by 10 June, as that is the day on which Yasmin, the group coordinator, starts her maternity leave. Now that's the kind of deadline that can't be pushed back!

REDP, EDP monthly meetings

At the LGBT Centre, Wellington Street, for the regular meeting of the Regional Equality and Diversity Partnership (REDP), followed by the Equality and Diversity Partnership (EDP) which meets after lunch. These meetings are held on the first Tuesday of every month, usually at the Leicestershire Centre for Integraterd Living (LCIL). This is the first meeting I've attended which we've held at another venue. I'd not been beyond the reception area on the ground floor of the LGBT Centre before today. I must say, I'm rather envious of the layout, the facilities and the open, airy space. But when I tell Ian this, he responds by saying tha the whole place is about to be gutted, redecorated and kitted out with new fixtures and fittings. I wouldn't mind some of their old stuff!

Oh and if you don't know the difference between REDP and EDP, then read on - all (well, some) will be revealed ...

Things don't get off to the greatest of starts for me this morning, when I fail to get to the Centre in time for the start of the meeting. I've been suffering under a heavy cold for the past few days and it was at its worst last night and I didn't get to bed until very late, which led to me oversleeping this morning. I arrived in time to join in a debriefing on the three REDP Involvement Events that we've held in Nottingham, Oakham and Leasingham. I'm still impressed by how constructive, positive and supportive our little group is. More than two years I've been involved in this partnership and in that time I've never witnessed an argument or heard a harsh word used by any member against another. We still have five of these Involvement Events to go, in Loughborough (Tue 9 Feb), Retford (Thu 11 Feb), Derby (Tue 16 Feb), Northampton (Thu 25 Feb) and Leiceester (Thu 4 Mar). On the back of what's happened in this project so far, we've been asked to make presentations to a regional event at an as yet undecided date in March and to a national event for the English Regions Equalities Network (EREN) in London on 3 March. This last one will be done by Laura Horton (Project Manager for REDP), Ian Robson (Director of the LGBT Centre) and me.

In the afternoon, we have a meeting of the Equality and Diversity Partnership, at which we welcome representatives of Age Concern, Leicester City Council, Leicester City NHS and Leicestershire Constabulary. We receive a strong and useful presentation on the city's domestic violence strategy - an issue that cuts across all the equality strands and on which we can all collaborate.

So, what's the distinction between EDP and REDP? Basically, the Equality and Diversity Partnership is the vehicle by which we offer our services in/to the city. The Regional Equality and Diversity Partnership is the vehicle by which we do the same for the whole of the East Midlands. That should be good enough to be getting on with.

Find out more about the Leicester LGBT Centre:
http://www.llgbc.com/