Trust Board Febuary 2010 - Sandwell & West Birmingham Hospitals

SWBTB (2/10) 045 (a)
Concerns about not being able to give birth in Sandwell:
• Be clear that the consolidation of consultant led maternity services, including births at City
Hospital is an interim position until the new Acute Hospital opens in Smethwick in 2015/16. The
consultant led maternity services will then transfer into the new Acute Hospital and so women will
then be able to give birth in Sandwell.
• Be clear about the improvements to services for high risk women including consultant presence
on Delivery Suite for longer hours, introduction of specialist consultant led antenatal clinics and
better recruitment of staff.
• Establish a stand alone Birth Centre in Sandwell.
The Project Steering Group will produce a dissemination plan to ensure that the Trust and PCTs fulfil
their responsibilities to report on consultation findings to all those who participated.
5.3 Equality Impact Assessment
The requirement to undertake an Equality Impact Assessment is contained within the Race Relations
(Amendment) Act 2000. This requires listed public authorities to conduct an assessment of the impact of
their current or intended policies, programmes and service delivery for any disadvantageous
experiences or outcomes to black and minority ethnic groups and to take action to remove inequalities.
In addition, the Disability Discrimination Act 2005 has placed a duty to promote disability equality on all
public sector authorities. This duty includes arrangements for impact assessment with regards to
disadvantageous experiences or outcomes of people with disabilities. The Equality Act 2006 creates a
duty to promote equality between men and women which includes conducting impact assessments for
gender equality and a requirement to take account of religion and sexual orientation in the provision of
education and services.
The assessment of impact is undertaken through the implementation of a robust Equality Impact
Assessment (EQIA). The EQIA is a systematic way of assessing whether any of the proposed service
model options could potentially have a differential impact on diverse groups covered by Equality
legislation.
The Trust and Sandwell PCT have extended the scope of their equality impact assessment process
beyond legal requirements for monitoring impact, to include groups characterised not only by race,
disability and gender or gender identity; but also to include age, sexual orientation and religion or belief.
In addition, the significant impact of the proposed changes to maternity services has facilitated the need
for this approach to be revised in two ways:
• To extend the scope of the equality impact assessment to include the impact on groups resulting
from social economic status. This is particularly important due to the significant high levels of
social and economic deprivation amongst population groups that will access maternity services
within the Sandwell and Heart of Birmingham PCT patient boundaries.
• To amalgamate the EQIA screening and full assessment process into one continual assessment
to ‘run alongside’ the medium term maternity review decision making process. This will ensure
that the equality impact assessment outcomes underpin, strengthen and inform the medium term
maternity services decision making process at each stage of the review.
The Project Steering Group in undertaking this amalgamated approach to the EQIA assessment is
following the stages outlined below.
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