Barts Health Equality and Human Rights Impact Assessment Report

Barts Health Equality and Human Rights Impact Assessment ReportI. INTRODUCTION1.1 Background to this reportThis report is the result of an equality and human rights analysis of the proposed merger ofBarts and London NHS Trust, Newham University Hospitals NHS Trust and Whipps CrossUniversity Hospital NHS Trust. It provides the proposed merged trust (Barts Health) with anopportunity to recognise and capitalise on the advantages of the potential merger in relationto equality and human rights. It also helps to identify potential negative effects. How can themerger be made more advantageous? How can previous patterns of inequality anddiscrimination be screened out in the future using the energy of creating a new organisationto drive improved practice, develop new standards and deliver better health outcomes forall?The equality and human rights analysis builds on an initial equality impact assessmentscreening of the Outline Business Case already undertaken by the three Trusts tounderstand the equality implications of the merger. Given the health inequalities in the area,the Trusts have recognised that there will be potentially significant equality and human rightsimplications to the merger. They have also noted that the broad process of equality andhuman rights analysis must be on-going as the merger integration programme develops itswork-streams and as the new organisation takes shape. This report is part of that process.The Trusts would like the equality analysis contained in this report to also help them indeveloping the future Equality Strategy of Barts Health and in undertaking on-goingmeasurement of equality progress.This report was written by brap, a national, innovative and no-nonsense equality and humanrights charity. brap were commissioned to take an overview of the situation and advise onthe equality and human rights implications of the merger as they relate to particularprotected characteristics (as covered in the Equality Act 2010). Key requirements for thisexternal support taken from the project specification are included below:reviewing and examining the findings of an initial Equality & Human Rights Analysis(EHRIA) of the Outline Business Casetesting the conclusions and recommendations of that initial EHRIA with stakeholders;collecting baseline data covering the catchment area of the proposed merged Trust(population, health inequalities and staff equality data) – this was seen by the ProjectSteering Group as a priorityundertaking an EHRIA with reference to the baseline dataa description of the negative and positive impacts of the merger and the central issuesthat need to be addressed to mitigate the negative impacts19