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Equalities

Equality monitoring

Monitoring people by equality group, ie, by age, disability, gender, race, religion or belief, or sexual orientation, is an essential tool in being able to identify inequalities. It enables us to take action to reduce and eliminate differences in uptake/representation/outcome experienced by different groups of customers, potential customers and employees.

Without equality monitoring we are lacking the way to be able to answer questions like:

• Who are our customers?
• Who is not using our service?
• How satisfied are different groups of customers?
• What outcomes are different groups experiencing?

With this information we can plan appropriate service developments and improvements that will narrow the gap for our diverse customers in terms of the quality of service being delivered and the employment opportunities being made available. Therefore, equality monitoring is an important diagnostic tool and necessary for effective service planning.

As equalities legislation develops there is a growing requirement to carry out equality impact assessments on our services. It is difficult, if not impossible; to prove that equalities duties have been met if monitoring data is not available. So although the legislation does not say you must produce equality monitoring data in service delivery it is very difficult to see how we could fulfil the race, disability and gender duties without such data. Monitoring results provide us with a start for future planning against which progress can be measured.

In summary, equality monitoring is needed to:

• highlight inequalities;
• investigate the causes of inequality;
• take action to reduce and remove inequalities.

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