Equality and diversity

LOROS Hospice Care is committed to promoting equality, diversity and inclusion by ensuring fair, accessible and appropriate services for patients, their carers and visitors, and wish to demonstrate the developments we make by embedding the work into our policies, practices and processes.

We are an established employer and service provider in Palliative and End of Life care, drawing our staff from diverse backgrounds and life experiences. The diversity of our workforce brings a richness of cultures and lifestyles, that helps to deliver services that meet the needs of our local community.

We recognise the ever-changing environment that we all live in and the growing complexities in health issues. This is why we recognise the need to work in partnership with our staff, people using our services and stakeholders to reduce health inequalities.

What is meant by equality, diversity and inclusion?

The Equality Act 2010 protects people from any form of discriminatory behaviour in wider society and the workplace. For LOROS, this requires us when delivering any of our care services to have “due regard” to:

1. Eliminate discrimination, harassment, victimisation and any other conduct that is prohibited by or under the Act

2. Advance equality of opportunity between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and those who do not; and

3. Foster good relations between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it.
   

This includes preventing discrimination by perception or association as well as directly or indirectly and applies to any of the protected characteristics covered by the Act: age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion and belief, sex, and sexual orientation.

LOROS aims to promote equality through providing access to services, information and opportunities in ways that are fair and respectful of people’s differing needs (including emotional, cultural and spiritual). We value diversity of background, experience and perspectives so that we can learn from as well as serve people from every community across Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland. We seek inclusion by continuous and regular engagement with all those who use or have an interest in our services and supporting activities.

We identify, implement and monitor progress of specific work to meet our aims and values through an action plan to ensure that service development reflects equality themes that are important to patients, their families and our staff. The plan is reviewed regularly and we will update this page as work in this area progresses.