Promoting equality, diversity and inclusion

We are committed to supporting and promoting equality, diversity and inclusion.

We have an overarching EDI action plan running in tandem with our three-year Strategic Plan 2023-26.

We have set two equality objectives to progress our continued journey to drive forward EDI.

Objective 1: Develop our EDI leadership

As an independent body overseeing regulation and registration and setting standards for organisations, we recognise we have an important role in championing EDI practice and outcomes. This is why our first equality objective is focused on developing our EDI leadership. We understand that developing our EDI leadership includes promoting EDI in our work and those we oversee. It also includes using our influence and convening powers to be timely, visible and current in responding to emerging and ‘new’ EDI issues, whist maintaining the profile of more longstanding and persistent EDI matters.

Our Strategic Plan sets out our aim to make regulation and registration better and fairer. In doing so it sets out our intention that by 2026 EDI indicators across the regulators and Accredited Registers show significant progress when compared to 2022/23.

Objective 2: Build an inclusive workplace

We recognise that creating and sustaining inclusive workplace practices requires continuous commitment and action. This is why our second equality objective focuses on driving forward EDI within the workplace and more specifically building and improving upon our existing inclusive practices.

PSA first self-assessment on equality, diversity and inclusion and reflections on progress made

We have published our first self-assessment on equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI). The purpose of the self-assessment was to evaluate where and how we can improve EDI outcomes in our own processes and in those we oversee.

To provide us with a structured and objective approach, we used the EDI Standard of Good Regulation. Our self-assessment was carried out between February and May 2024 and used a modified version of the Performance Review Standard 3 to make it more relevant to our work and functions. It reviewed our EDI performance from 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024.

We committed to assess ourselves robustly and objectively as part of our EDI action plan for 2023-24. Our intention was to demonstrate leadership by holding ourselves to account for the quality of our work on EDI. We also wanted to identify areas for improvement that would be taken forward in our EDI action plan for 2024-25.

Reflecting on progress made on EDI

The PSA Strategic Plan 2019-22 referred to the importance of: regulation protecting the most vulnerable; having a diverse staff team; and further improving organisational culture and upholding the values of the organisation (respect, fairness, integrity, transparency and teamwork). We also introduced our first EDI Standard of Good Regulation in 2019.

In September 2020, we set up our EDI Working Group – a staff-led group to support and promote EDI across the organisation and in those we oversee. In November 2020, we commissioned an independent EDI review that was completed in April 2021. The review findings pointed towards many positive aspects of our work that supported and demonstrated our commitment to EDI. It also identified areas to work on in terms of strengthening the leadership of EDI; the analysis of EDI issues internally and externally; and a review of our people plans and HR practices. It specifically recommended establishing an EDI action plan. We published our first EDI action plan in spring 2022. We have now completed our 2022/23 and 2023/24 EDI action plans.

In our 2023-26 Strategic Plan, we have a strategic aim ‘to make regulation better and fairer’, which includes an objective ‘to promote and monitor equality, diversity and inclusion in our work and in those we oversee’. Over the past five years we have had a strong focus on EDI, our values, and creating a positive internal culture. In our most recent staff survey (November 2023), 92% of staff agreed with the statement, “I am treated fairly” and 97% agreed with the statement, “I am treated with respect”. We also had very positive responses to an additional survey on psychological safety in March 2024.

Our findings from the self-assessment

There have been many changes since our first EDI action plan was developed and we recognised these as we reviewed our performance over 2023-2024.

Most notably, we have enhanced our expectations in relation to EDI for those we oversee. A new EDI standard designed to strengthen our approach to EDI within our accreditation programme was introduced to the Standards for Accredited Registers in May 2023. We also amended the requirements for meeting our EDI Standard of Good Regulation, making them more comprehensive, at the same time.

In addition, we now have clear equality objectives providing focus for our annual EDI action plans and there is a strong governance structure to embed EDI across the organisation. Other changes include the introduction of personal EDI objectives for all staff, supported by a wide range of professional development opportunities; annual collection and analysis of staff and Board diversity data; the introduction of an Associate Board Member to increase Board diversity; establishment of a larger senior management team to further improve diversity of thought in decision-making; and wider user of equality impact assessments.

Even with these numerous positive achievements, we have been deliberately self-critical in our approach to the self-assessment in order to drive further improvements. Our overall finding was that we do not yet fully meet all the expected outcomes of the EDI Standard of Good Regulation. We identified several opportunities for improvement. We need to be stronger in collecting and using EDI data across all our functions and we need to examine where there may be potential for bias in our procedures. We also want to be better at hearing public, patient and service user voices..

We believe our self-assessment was a rigorous, fair and candid reflection of where we are now regarding EDI. We publish our findings as part of our commitment to continuing progress on EDI. We will carry out a self-assessment again by April 2025, when we expect to report good performance against the Standard. We will publish the outcome of this in summer 2025.

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Reflections on the Council on Licensure, Enforcement and Regulation’s 2023 Annual Educational Conference

by Louise Appleby, Accreditation Officer | Nov 01, 2023

In September, the PSA attended and presented at the Council on Licensure, Enforcement and Regulation (CLEAR) 2023 Annual Educational Conference in Salt Lake City, USA. CLEAR’s mission is to ‘promote regulatory excellence through conferences, educational programs, webinars, seminars and symposia.’

A predominant theme at this year’s conference was Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI). EDI has become an area of increasing focus for a range of organisations in recent years and we noticed that many presentations – like ours – considered it.

Steve Wright, a colleague from our Performance Review team, and I presented on the PSA’s approach to EDI for statutory regulators and Accredited Registers. We started with a discussion on the changes we are making to the statutory regulators’ EDI Standard (Standard Three), which has been in place since 2019. In our most recent assessments, all the regulators met Standard Three. We decided to review this Standard last year and engaged with stakeholders for feedback on our proposed changes, which focused on driving improvement. We also presented on the development of the new EDI Standard (Standard Nine) for the Standards for Accredited Registers. We discussed our approach, the results of the public consultation and the challenges faced in developing a new Standard.

Our presentation was well received and from the discussions with other organisations, it was clear that there is a lot of innovative work in train; however, it was also clear that for many, this journey is just beginning. Similar issues were raised across a range of sectors; one being the collection of data. How do you encourage people to complete EDI data surveys to ensure that any results are meaningful? How do you assure people that this data is going to be used for positive change? What about the safe storage of data and potential legislative barriers to collecting it?

Another theme that emerged was the equity vs equality debate, which examines the difference between everyone having appropriate access based on their needs and circumstances to achieve fair outcomes, and everyone having the same access regardless of differences. This is not something we have particularly focused on in our Standards and it isn’t always part of the conversation when we are discussing EDI. The debate certainly gave us some food for thought; a greater focus on equity is something we should consider in the future.

I also attended presentations on complaints handling, which highlighted the importance of kindness and compassion when handling complaints – not only towards complainants but towards registrants. Terms such as ‘caring regulation’ and ‘compassionate regulation’ were used. Presenters discussed the importance of prevention and having clear and accessible standards so that registrants know what is expected. They also talked about creating ‘compassionate communications’ throughout the process to increase the likelihood of registrants engaging and complying with any sanctions and/or changes to their practice, with the result that they would be less likely to leave the occupation.

There is a lot of innovative work being done to protect the public by regulators from across different countries and sectors. Many are grappling with the same issues, whether that be how to assess EDI or how to implement good practice in complaints handling. The conference was an effective forum for sharing knowledge and good practice; and prompting us to keep thinking about how this applies to our work and the assessments we do.

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PSA first self-assessment on equality, diversity and inclusion

We have published our first self-assessment on EDI. The purpose of the self-assessment was to evaluate where and how we can improve EDI outcomes in our own processes and in those we oversee. We've also reflected on the progress we have made to date. See opposite for more details.

No more excuses - tackling inequalities in health and care professional regulation

This is the first chapter in our report - Safer care for all: solutions from professional regulation and beyond. we looked at the impact of inequalities on patients, service users and registrants, and on public confidence more widely. We also took a closer look at what professional regulation (and beyond) could do to tackle inequalities in health and care.

We have held two events linked to this over the last year:

On 14 December 2023 more than 90 participants joined us online to explore whether health and care professionals in the UK should have an explicit responsibility in supporting action to address these disparities as they do in other countries. And, if so, whether regulators need to reinforce such a role through their training, standards and guidance.

We then started the new year off with a joint online seminar on tackling barriers to complaints with the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO). The event followed on the heels of an earlier in-person event with patient and service-user organisations held in Edinburgh in September 2023.

The event brought together over 100 stakeholders from across the health and social care sector to discuss and explore the barriers that currently existing and can prevent patients and service uses from complaining. Along with our PHSO colleagues we wanted to share examples of innovative actions to widen and improve access to complaints services and to encourage and promote further joint work to tackle barriers to complaining. The event gave us much food for thought and we will look to continue this work in 2024/25.

You can find out more about both of these events here.