Equality and Diversity Strategy

The Children’s Services Equality and Diversity Action Plan contributes to the East Sussex County Council Equality Strategy to meet the Public Sector Equality Duty. It provides a framework to develop excellent equality, diversity and inclusion practice.

The action plan aims to support positive outcomes for:

  • the children and families we work with 
  • our staff

This covers people with the following "relevant protected characteristics":

  • age
  • disability
  • gender reassignment
  • marriage and civil partnership
  • pregnancy and maternity
  • race
  • religion or belief
  • sex
  • sexual orientation

In East Sussex, we also include the following categories:

  • carers
  • Armed Forces
  • people with care experience (e.g having been a Looked After Child)
  • rurality

Children’s Services are working on priority actions. These relate to the four domains of the East Sussex County Council equality action plan.

A) Leadership on equality and demonstrating commitment

  • Continue to deliver equality learning and development offer for elected Members

  • Involve young people in decision making in the interview process for senior staff

  • Ensure that we take action to prevent violence, harassment and discrimination in the workplace, and respond effectively if it is reported.

B) Using data and engagement effectively to make improvements

  • Include equality information in new data dashboards across Children’s Services as standard.

  • Continue to collect and review attendance and exclusion data from schools together with data on ethnicity, sex, disability and eligibility for Free School Meals.

  • Facilitate youth voice groups including:

    o   Youth Cabinet

    o   SEND Young Ambassadors

    o   Children in Care Council

    o   Leaving Care Council

    o   Youth Vocals (Social Care)

    o   Youth voice groups in Youth Hubs

C) Quality services taking into account diverse needs of local people

  • Ensure Equality Impact Assessments inform service planning and delivery.

  • Support schools in meeting their Public Sector Equality Duty e.g., facilitating a Schools’ and Colleges’ Race Equality Network and providing guidance on equality duty.

  • Work together with our key partners to improve outcomes for vulnerable and marginalised groups, including:

    o   People with care experience e.g., being a Looked After Child

    o   People from Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities.

    o   Disabled children and those with special educational needs and disability

D) Diverse workforce with equality confidence, knowledge and skills

  • Deliver training for staff on a range of equality matters, including "Talking About Equality" training.

  • Support the workforce to understand best practice for the participation of SEND young people.