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 outlined in the East Sussex County Council's 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.