East Sussex NHS Trust worker celebrated after winning award

Sarah Feather, the East Sussex’s Healthcare NHS Trust’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Lead, who recently won a Diversity in Health and Care Partners Programme award for the trust.

The programme supports health and care organisations to create more inclusive workplace cultures, where difference is welcomed and celebrated.

Sarah said: “We were lucky enough to be accepted on the very first programme cohort following an application to express our interest and describing what we wanted to gain from the programme.

“There were opportunities to showcase our work nationally as well as developing relationships with peers and networking with health and social care leaders, industry experts and the expert diversity and inclusion team at NHS Employers.”

The award was given for attending and participating in four modules over the course of twelve months. Each module focused on a different theme – Effecting change, Inclusive leadership, Inclusion and health inequalities and Impact and engagement

Sarah continued: “We are one of only 56 NHS trusts who joined and completed this new programme and I was able to invite colleagues to attend and learn alongside me. This gave me valuable time to develop relationships and working practices with our network chairs.

“I have loved being part of this programme. The opportunity to network and to be introduced to some inspirational people is unmatched on any other programme for inclusion.”

(Dis)Ability network chair, January Newton-Baxendine, who also attended, said, “It was great to be given the opportunity to attend an external event and it was nice to meet other inclusion teams across the country. I also appreciated bring approached to record a video to advertise our (Dis)Ability Network to NHS Employers and I enjoyed taking part in such a positive programme.”

LGBTQ network chair, Rob Tricker, said, “Having the opportunity to experience and attend an event with likeminded colleagues around diversity and inclusion was an excellent time to show case what we have achieved at our trust, and what our plans going forward are. It allowed us the time to collaborate with NHS people from across the country. It was such a positive and productive programme.”