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NHS Education for Scotland

A skilled and sustainable workforce for a healthier Scotland

Equality, diversity and human rights

NES is committed to the principles of eliminating discrimination and harassment, promoting equality of opportunity for all and recognising and valuing diversity in employment and in the delivery of our services.

We recognise the importance of taking an anti-racism approach and the need for specific actions to address systemic racism. We see good equality, diversity and inclusion practice as central to delivering our vision of supporting better rights-based quality care and outcomes for every person in Scotland through a skilled, capable and resilient health and social care workforce.

The NHS Scotland Values are at the heart of everything we do:

• care and compassion;
• dignity and respect;
• openness;
• honesty and responsibility; and
• quality and teamwork.

We aim to be an inclusive organisation where we recognise, celebrate and value all of our differences. We all have a part to play in creating an inclusive workplace culture and making progress in equality. Scotland’s health and social care workforce is diverse. Our purpose is to provide high quality education, training and workforce development for the workforce. Equality, diversity, inclusion and human rights is central to achieving our purpose.

We also have statutory requirements to progress equality by meeting the Equality Act (2010), including the Public Sector Equality Duty and the Fairer Scotland Duty. Embedding equality into all our work is an important part to meet these requirements.

The Equality, diversity and human rights team

The Equality, diversity and human rights team at NES has the following mission:

To mainstream equality, diversity and human rights through NES’s work, contribute to an inclusive workplace culture and to the provision of high quality, up to date and relevant educational and training resources on equality and diversity for the health and social care sector.

The team’s work includes:

• development and support for NES’s strategy on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, including progress towards our Equality Outcomes
• development of learning resources on equality, diversity and inclusion, including resources for the health and social care workforce on the Equality and Diversity zone on Turas Learn
• regular training and learning sessions
• a lively lunchtime events series
• a thriving community of staff networks
• a community of interest for staff learning and collaboration
• statutory reporting on our Public Sector Equality Duty
• supporting our Equality and Human Rights Steering Group.

If you would like to learn more about equality, diversity and human rights at NES, please contact us at nes.equalityteam@nhs.scot.