AN HOUR AT THE TOWERS

A brief meeting this afternoon at The Towers with Abida Hussein (Equality & Human Rights Officer, Integrated Equality Service, Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust).

Hopefully, we've fixed dates for a week-long series of briefings for staff on the new printed and intranet resources on faith communities in Leicester, as well as the establishment of an inter-faith staff forum. The first part of these sessions should take about half an hour, then another half hour shared with new and existing staff forums (e.g. BME, LGBT, carers).

PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT GROUP CONSIDERS NHS GUIDELINES

This morning, there's a meeting of my Personnel Management Group scheduled at the Welcome Centre, 1100-1300. However, I'm under pressure to progress work on a set of guidelines from a booklet given me by Abida Hussein at Leicestershire NHS Partnership Trust, containing advice and guidance to be followed when patients of different background, religion or tradition present for the first time at hospital, in A&E or at their GP surgery. I ask for the scheduled meeting to be postponed but for the members attending to go over the text of the booklet, from the perspective of their own religions. That allows me to have the advantage of the Bahá'í , Christian, Hindu and Jewish points of view here this morning.


I have to leave promptly at 1300, to dash down ot the Guildhall to meet Asaf Hussain and visitors from the Iranian Cultural Centre in London, who are doing a recce there for the proposed festival of Iranian culture coming here in March. So I have to usher my colleagues out with little ceremony, so I can lock up. On the way out, we bump into one of the Barry Naylors, on his way into the SPCK book shop on the ground floor.

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".