14M to be spent on DEI jobs in the NHS

[Melroses]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/09/17/nhs-england-diversity-roles-despite-crackdown-waste-wokery/

In today's Telegraph

" Officials at NHS England have drawn up plans for three new departments called “Equality, Diversity and Inclusion”, “People and Culture” and “People and Communities”, with 244 posts across the teams.
The Health Secretary is understood to be “frustrated” by the move and intends to summon health officials to demand explanations for the creation of large departments enforcing “woke doctrines”.
Ministers have repeatedly promised to crack down on bureaucracy, with NHS England ordered to cut its total workforce by up to 40 per cent.
Earlier this year, Steve Barclay, the Health Secretary, ordered NHS England to get rid of specific diversity and inclusion roles, as part of efforts to “ensure good value for money”.
The latest move has emerged ahead of the first joint strikes by junior doctors and consultants which NHS bosses have warned will cancel almost all appointments.
NHS waiting lists in England are also at a record high, with 7.7 million people – around one in seven of the population – waiting for treatment. "

I can’t read the article as it’s behind a paywall.

However, why not spend the DEI money on investigating why Black mothers and their babies have significantly higher perinatal mortality rates than white mothers and their babies?

There is the whole issue of maternal and child deaths at the moment - so many investigations.
I was reading a thread on General Health where people are being encouraged to have endoscopy without sedation. So much penny pinching.
There is the lack of thought for deaf people when they put in new systems to call people for appointments so they are just left sitting there.
https://archive.ph/e3Kv8

Hard to comment without seeing the breakdowns as I've seen People & Culture used elsewhere as a euphemism for standard HR. But they do quote 50 EDI staff for £3M a year, and the total costs for all three depts as £14M a year. I believe the total NHS England budget is around £600M.

The thing that strikes me with EDI is that there really is very little evidence that it improves outcomes. And some reason to think it causes problems, as we know well here.

I think it's mostly a make-work scheme for people with shitty gender studies and sociology degrees.

Absolutely agree. I remember Investors in People, which was just a power grab for ambitious HR and actually made no difference and did some damage.

This is just a distraction from the NHS core services and their deep seated problems with the culture.

Archive link (I hope)

https://archive.ph/e3Kv8

I admit hearing DEI makes me feel quite salty, but I am prepared to be persuaded that it can do good and even provided value for money. I don't recall seeing any evidence of this but absence of proof is not etc.

What @IsleOfPenguinBollards brought up is an excellent example.

However, this from the article doesn't fill me with hope

The plans say the national EDI team will focus on establishing “policy, knowledge and expertise in areas other than race and disability”.

I'd like to think it's just the Telegraph spinning, but it seems to be a direct quote from the proposal.

Why are black mothers and babies more likely to die? Is it they less likely to be listened to with concerns?

My DSis was put on secondment to Diversity Equality and Inclusion at the NHS. It doesn't improve outcomes because it's a massive box ticking exercise so they can pretend they're helping people when in actuality it's set up to make any help impossible and most of the work they do is pointless bureaucracy to justify their own roles.

The worst part is, the people who work there include a lot of bullies who were basically unemployable anywhere else in the NHS because they've got no skills except for how to get people out of the NHS and make it look legit without breaching any equality laws, and when my poor DSis tried to question some dubious practices, she got "managed out" of her job. She went down so many avenues to try and sort it out. She was left very disillusioned.

But look, they've got money for this, but not for properly funding things that would actually benefit patients.

It’s not a euphamism. They have different focuses.

(ex NHS HR Director and now Director of P+C.)

It seems very likely as a factor. An American study already found that black babies were more likely to survive if their doctor was also black.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/17/black-babies-survival-black-doctors-study

It may be as simple and grotesque as ignorance of how to recognise urgent symptoms in black people. I don't know if you remember, but during the pandemic, the public were told not to call an ambulance for someone with covid unless the ill person's lips were turning blue.

Except, that doesn't work for all ethnicities as a visual method of detecting low oxygenation.

We don't entirely know for definite, but the culture of systemic racism at the NHS might play a part in it. It's definitely a thing though. We should have results written up soon:

@NeighbourhoodWatchPotholeDivision ah X post, sorry.

I did some research into morbidity and mortality in pregnancy related to ethnicity/race many years ago. I presented at an international conference on women's health.
When I tried to talk about it on MN I was accused of racism.
I am so glad I am retired.

Why are black mothers and babies more likely to die? Is it they less likely to be listened to with concerns?

A big part of the problem is that we don't know the answer to that question.

Probably partly less likely to be listened to (we already know women in general are less likely to be listened to than men).

And it's quite likely there are different risk factors. We know, for example, that black people have different risk factors for cardiac health and are likely to respond differently to some drugs. We also know that women respond differently to a lot of drugs. Most medical research has been carried out on men, and results tend not to be analysed by either sex or ethnicity.

And - for reasons not unrelated to the above - trust of medical professionals is lower, so they may miss out on antenatal care. In the US, which has particularly bad outcomes for black mothers and babies, there's also the income/insurance problem.

We know it's a problem, we know there are a multiple reasons but not really the specifics of why or how to solve it. That's the sort of thing where equality funding and policies could really make a difference.

the public were told not to call an ambulance for someone with covid unless the ill person's lips were turning blue.

Except, that doesn't work for all ethnicities as a visual method of detecting low oxygenation.

There are quite a lot of diagnostic things like this that rely on default-white skin. Rashes, for example, or signs of anaemia. There was a medical student (or first year doc?) about 4 years ago who realised absolutely none of his medical textbooks covered this, so wrote and published his own diagnostic manual with illustrations for different skin colours.

Yes, that is the sort of thing the NHS is able to do with universal care and statistics at hand. Yet it isn't happening.

I think it's mostly a make-work scheme for people with shitty gender studies and sociology degrees

Yep

The managerial machine of the NHS seems to be so far removed from reality that it may as well be hosted on Mars.

These new departments of hundred of people: "Equality, Diversity and Inclusion”, “People and Culture” and “People and Communities”. Only "equality" appears in the equality act. The rest is the aims of activists.

If we end up with the NHS privatised, surely this nonsense will be part of why. It's so easy to make a case that they're not focused on the actual law or material reality so let's carve it up and make changes to the foundations of it.

Meanwhile our maternity services continue to be utterly fucking shocking. Will any of these posts address that? I shan't hold my breath.

Everything you have said has been known for decades. We need to start by making sure all of this is included in the training of medical and midwifery staff.
That the data collection in obstetric records is mandatory for everyone, so that clinical audit is meaningful and useful.
Currently there is such a shortage of properly trained staff, awful management, and a culture of cover up and incompetence in obstetric units everywhere.
I have been appalled at the poor care that my nieces and their babies have received compared to the level of care we provided back in the 70s and 80s. Really, really shocking neglect with very poor outcomes with 2 babies out of 5, in one family.
I worked on risk assessment tools in the NHS some years ago and the most significant thing we achieved was a clerking software program that would not progress unless the relevant risk assessment was completed.
Of course, it then has to be acted upon, which is a training, staffing and protocol issue.

Great point - an investigation which would actually fulfil a diversity, equity and inclusion brief in a meaningful way and might end up saving lives. Shocking idea, I know, for a health service.

Melroses
There is the whole issue of maternal and child deaths at the moment - so many investigations.
I was reading a thread on General Health where people are being encouraged to have endoscopy without sedation. So much penny pinching.
There is the lack of thought for deaf people when they put in new systems to call people for appointments so they are just left sitting there.

Enraging. I was very happy to see that the waiting room of my GP surgery has a flashing light and TV screen to alert patients as well as the announcement.

For those concerned about black mothers:

”The plans say the national EDI team will focus on establishing “policy, knowledge and expertise in areas other than race and disability”.
The other new departments, “People and Culture” and “People and Communities”, are set to include scores more roles dedicated to inclusion, voice and culture and LGBT health and inequalities.”

So, the money won’t be spent on correcting sex-based and racial inequalities in healthcare?

Or on improving healthcare access for people with sensory impairments?

On on producing clear health information, which doesn’t exclude people who speak English as an additional language and people with learning disabilities?

The £14,000,000 will be spent on rainbows and pronouns.

We are left with

age(ignore or reinforce),
gender reassignment✅ This is Gender Identity,
marriage and civil partnership (important to change to include GI people), pregnancy and maternity (Also important to change to include GI),
religion or belief, (to include GI)
sex, and sexual orientation. (These are Gender Identity too)

Well it's a lot easier to stick rainbows and pronouns on stuff than actually address inequalities, isn't it?

The hospital I worked in actually got rid of the free blue badge parking. So they could add more extortionate bays. They can afford murals/ flags/ lanyards though.
DEI doesn't seem to include people with disabilities.