Equality Impact Assessment 2021

Relative to our 2020 EIA report there has been an increased number of projects to draw equalities data from (seven compared to four) and the number of people we engaged with (7,224 this year compared 1,598 last year). The individual projects we have reviewed, in chronological order, are:

1.  Accessing health and care services – findings during the Coronavirus pandemic (October 2020).
2.  Accessing health and care services – findings during the Coronavirus pandemic – young people’s survey (November 2020).
3. Patient Transport Services in Sussex: What patients and passengers told us about the service in 2020 - Full report (November 2020).
4. Dental Services during COVID-19 (February 2021).
5.  COVID-19 Vaccinations: What are your experiences and views? (May 2021).
6. Hospital discharge well-being project (from April 2020 and ongoing).
7. COVID-19 Vaccination helpline (from February 2021 and ongoing).

The report concludes with a final section which aggregates all the data from the above studies and compares it to city-wide figures. The role of Healthwatch is to gather patient opinion on health and social care services, and we expect that the types of communities we engage will vary across our different projects.

Projects, for example in supporting those recently discharged from hospital are expected to engage with a greater proportion of older people and those with disabilities compared to that of the city-wide population.

COVID-19 has also resulted in us delivering more online forms of engagement and it is known that more women will respond to this form of engagement relative to men (within a health and social care context).

In 2020-2021, Healthwatch was effective in hearing the views from:

• People with disabilities – 33% of people we engaged with were those with disabilities compared to 16% across the city.
• People who are LGBTQ+ - 12% of people we engaged with identified as either a Lesbian, Gay man, Bisexual or Other. This is comparable to the city’s Joint 1 https://www.healthwatchbrightonandhove.co.uk/report/2020-05-01/equality… Strategy Needs Assessment’s ‘best estimate’ of between 11% and 15% across the city.
• People with or without a religion – from the reports that recorded people’s religious status, Healthwatch was effective in hearing the views of those with and without a religion (49% and 51% respectively). These figures are almost identical to the city-wide figures.

Although Healthwatch heard the views of a diverse range of people, there are areas that require more engagement. These are the following:  

• Ethnic diversity – our reports achieved good representation from those who were not White-British (13%), however this is less that the city-wide figure of 19.5%.
• Sex – As for many online surveys nationally, our surveys included higher proportions of responses from women (68.8%).
• Age – 60% of those responding to our engagement activities were aged 40-74 years, with 10% aged under 34 years.