LJMU sets the pace in Department of Health contract
28 April 2011
University evaluates key NHS pilot projects to tackle inequalities and discrimination in the workforce.
Cross Faculty research from Liverpool John Moores University has helped the evaluation of the Pacesetters workforce initiative, with key findings showing that the way to NHS workforce improvements and greater equality and diversity is through people and partnerships. The evaluation identified a range of factors required to deliver successful workforce initiatives:
- Passionate and enthusiastic champions who will embed the initiative within existing systems
- Links with other initiatives
- Flexibility and openness to respond to change
- Taking time to explore the issues in-depth to develop well thought through and targeted changes
- Involving the community of interest in co-design was crucial
- Participants who were the focus of the intervention playing an active role in changing attitudes and behaviours
- In the current climate, projects with the commitment of senior managers and wide community ownership should be more resilient
Dr Giles A Barrett, Enterprise Co-ordinator for the LJMU Centre for the Study of Crime, Criminalisation and Social Exclusion said:
"The report reveals that without passionate and enthusiastic champions within the NHS Trust and top management buy-in to support positive change, the sustainability of projects including those tackling employment of people with learning disabilities, challenging bullying and increasing the representation of BME people within the Trust, becomes uncertain – particularly during times of organisational changes. We had a flexible and open approach to evaluation using a world café format so that learning from the pilot projects was shared by stakeholders through exchanges of ideas. The challenge is to now embed and disseminate the good practice from these projects across the service".
Notes to Editors:
The Pacesetters Department of Health programme set out to develop innovative approaches to tackling inequalities and discrimination on account of age, disability, ethnicity, gender, religion and belief and sexual orientation.
The work awarded to LJMU included evaluating 10 projects covering disability, bullying and harassment, flexible working and black minority ethnic groups located at PCTs, hospitals and ambulance trusts in South West, South East Coast, London, Leicester and Lincolnshire.
The Evaluation of Pacesetter Workforce Projects was led by Professor Jane Springett, Health and Applied Social Sciences (HASS) and Dr Aileen Lawless, Head of Centre for Public Service Management, Liverpool Business School (LBS) and included an evaluation team comprising: Dr Giles Barrett, Media, Arts and Social Science (MASS) and Dr Ian Elliott (MASS) Dr Darren Greenop and Andrea Newman (HASS) and Dr Adam Richards (LBS).
The report can be viewed at: http://www.ljmu.ac.uk/Business/Business_Docs/Pacesetters_Workforce_Development_Evaluation(final_agreed_version(1).pdf
