Joint Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy 2024 – 2028 published

CIW and HIW are the independent inspectorates and regulators of healthcare, social care, and childcare in Wales. Through our work, we take action to improve the quality and safety of services for the well-being of the people of Wales. HIW and CIW have collectively come together, to pool our experience and knowledge, to work on a joint strategy which supports both organisations. 

Together, we place people at the heart of what we do and seek to be a trusted voice which influences and drives improvement in health and care services across Wales. We want to help improve people’s access to and the quality of their experience of these services. We believe that ensuring we have a strong focus on EDI within our work will support us to achieve this aim.

The joint strategy will complement Welsh Government’s equality plans, and aims to align and make connections between existing plans (such as the Anti-Racist Action Plan for Wales and LGBTQ+ Action Plan for Wales for example).

Our strategy will provide new opportunities to help reduce inequalities across healthcare, social care, and childcare services, therefore as inspectorates and regulators, we will:

• Strengthen the focus on equality and diversity in our work and where we find inequalities we will challenge and report on this. We will embed equality, diversity, and inclusion in our work, to drive improvements in the delivery of healthcare, social care and childcare services for people who share one or more of the protected characteristics. 
• We will improve our engagement with diverse communities, so they have a strong voice and influence in our work. We will increase our understanding of the experiences of people who share one or more of the protected characteristics to inform our decision making. 
• Build our organisations so they are inclusive and representative. We will build a more diverse workforce that reflects the communities we serve. We will support our workforce to flourish and thrive whatever their background in fair and inclusive workplaces. We will invest in developing the skills and knowledge of our staff and create learning cultures to enable us to evaluate and challenge our understanding of equality, diversity, and inclusion.

This strategy aims to drive forward improvement and demonstrate our commitment to EDI principles, to address our social responsibilities as regulators and inspectorates to ensure everyone in Wales has access to good quality care.

We will report on our progress in meeting the objectives outlined within this strategy through our individual annual reports.

Through our actions outlined within this strategy we will have a better understanding of the health and social care experiences of people from all backgrounds, and better reflect the voice of the people within our work. The joint strategy will also improve links and knowledge sharing, including good practice to improve the quality of care provided by health, social and childcare services across Wales.

Chief Executive of Healthcare Inspectorate Wales, Alun Jones said:

“Inequality should play no part in how services are designed or delivered. We recognise the important role our organisations play within these sectors and the wide-reaching nature of both areas for so many people across Wales. We will call out and challenge inequality in services wherever we find it, to ensure fairer and better outcomes for people.”

Chief Inspector of Care Inspectorate Wales, Gillian Baranski said:

“With this strategy, we reaffirm our commitment to challenge ourselves and the sectors we work with, to be more equal, more diverse and more inclusive in the way we work and the way in which healthcare, social care and childcare is provided.”

Joint Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Strategy 2024 - 2028