Liz Reay, Chief Executive Equality North East

1. Liz Reay, Chief Executive Equality North East

2. Who We Are! • Established 1997. • Based in Swalwell, Gateshead. • Local, regional and national activities. • Third Sector organisation. • ‘Not-For-Profit’ limited by guarantee. • All ‘margin’ reinvested for socio-economic gain.

3. What We Do! We strive to remove the barriers to equality for all in, employment, entry to employment and services,

4. How We Do It! • If I Can…You Can • www.equality-ne.co.uk • Access Points • ConNEcting for Change • The North East Equality Awards • ENE Training and Consultancy Services • The Equality Standard

5. The Equality StandardIt’s History ‘Equality in Employment’ Project outcome  Standard development partners: ONE NorthEast JobCentre Plus TUC Northern Region Muckle LLP North east VCS Coalition NEtWorking for Change members Launched commercially 03 April 2009

6. The Equality StandardWhat Is It? The standard is a benchmarking tool designed to help organisations show their commitment, internally and externally to equality and diversity and evidence that commitment through independent third party verification

7. The Equality StandardWhy Do We Want It? • Achieve fairness and enhance equality and diversity in the workplace; • Help ensure we provide a fair service for our customers and service users; • Achieve tangible business benefits; • Understand and comply with equality legislation and sector specific standards; • Reduce the risk of discrimination litigation; • Meet the equality criteria necessary to tender for public sector contracts

8. The Equality StandardWho Does It Apply To? • All organisations, Private & Third Sectors, ( & some ‘Public’ in Learning Provision & Social Housing) • Different approaches with regard to ‘small’ (<10) ‘medium’ (<250) and ‘large’ (>250) • Always use the same core elements of assessment, which are…

9. The Equality StandardCore Elements • Customers and Community 6. Your People: • Getting Them • Keeping Them • Monitoring/Knowing Them Leadership Policies and Procedures Harassment and Bullying Pay and Remuneration

10. The Equality StandardHow Does It Work? • Understand & accurately complete theself-assessment. • Examine the self-assessment & complete the diagnostic & ‘gap’ analysis. • Originate a timed action plan based on the outcomes of the diagnostic & ‘gap’ analysis. • Provide the ‘tools’. • Monitor & manage the action plan against agreed timelines. • Present collated evidence in the right format – Final Evidence Portfolio.

11. The Equality StandardThe ‘Tool’ Kit Sample policies and procedures. Best practice guidance sheets. Best practice case studies. Support on the law and evolving legislation. Links to organisations offering specialist support.

12. The Equality StandardFinal Assessment, Verification and Graduation Final ‘evidence’ assessment and moderation. Staff interviews. Graduation and Standard achievement award.

13. The Equality StandardFinal Assessment, Verification and Graduation Formal Standard presentation. Framed certificate and plaque with unique reference number. Official Standard artwork for own materials. Online recognition @ www.equality-e.co.uk/projects/standard/honours Bespoke case study. Press publicity. RE-ASSESSMENT EVERY 2 YEARS

14. Government Equalities Office The Equality Act ‘Making Equality Real’ Using buying power to make equality better. Public bodies spend over £220 billion pounds a year. That gives them a lot of buying power to tell companies they buy things from that they want them to include equality in the way they work. Buying power. This is the effect buyers can have on companies they buy things from. Because public bodies buy a lot of things, they can encourage suppliers to treat people fairly in the way they do their work. The Act enables the Government to tell some public bodies to think about how they can do this.

15. The Equality Act • Public Sector - Procurement Specific Duties: • “to set out how procurement activity will contribute to the achievement of your [i.e. the Public Sector] equality objectives” • “consider use of equality related award criteria where they are relevant to the subject matter of the contract and are proportionate” • “consider incorporating equality related contract conditions where they relate to the performance of the contract and are proportionate”

16. Considering the business case and rationale for developing an equalities and human rights framework for the third Sector, what are the possible options? The business case is already there for any organisation and our standard follows the equality of opportunity, equality of outcome and the promotion of individual rights through protected characteristics, approach; all underpinned by legislation.

17. How can an equality and human rights based approach be developed as a comprehensive and inclusive framework, to ensure that it benefits a broad range of third sector organisations and their service users or/and members? The customer/service delivery side of the standard already fits in to a human rights approach, as it asks organisation to look systematically at the impact on the way they carry out their services to individuals and those that share common social characteristics and asks for evidence of how they deal with conflicting priorities .

18. Although Equality North East is a regional organisation it is committed to ensuring the standard is nationally recognised: Government Equalities Office EHRC AESP ESW the partnernship EREN plans Others?

19. The Standard is fit for purpose for the Third Sector and is flexible enough to be proportionate to the size and focus of organisations (regardless of their sector). • A lot of hard work and consultation has gone into the development of this Standard and the resources behind it. • The plan to roll it out nationally is in the early stages but has established a route through which to do this i.e. EREN. It will increase the sustainability of third sector organisations and when it gets going it will be a way of increasing the capacity of third sector organisations licensed to deliver it too. • We are very happy to work with other partners who want to understand more!

20. Although Equality North East is a regional organisation it is committed to ensuring the standard is nationally recognised: Government Equalities Office EHRC AESP ESW the partnernship EREN plans Others?