Published on: 25 September 2019
South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust, which provides hospital and community services to hundreds of thousands of people in the North East, has been accredited as part of a national campaign to support disabled people into work.
The government’s Disability Confident scheme encourages employers to think differently about disability and improve how they attract, recruit and retain disabled workers and those with long-term health conditions.
Kath Griffin, the Trust’s Director of Human Resources and Organisational Development, said: “Our organisation is committed to promoting equality and diversity and leading the way in positively changing attitudes and behaviours so we are very proud to have achieved accreditation as a Disability Confident Employer.
“To ensure we have a workforce made up of people with the right skills to enable us to provide the local population with services of the highest quality, we need to draw from the widest possible pool of talent. To achieve this, we need to support employees to manage their disabilities or health conditions and help them to develop their careers. We are looking forward to further building upon our Disability Confident accreditation to the benefit of both our current and future employees.”
As part of the scheme, the Trust has committed to the following principles:
- Actively looking to attract and recruit disabled people
- Providing a fully inclusive and accessible recruitment process
- Offering an interview to disabled people who meet the minimum criteria for the job
- Flexibility when assessing people so disabled job applicants have the best opportunity to demonstrate that they can do the job
- Proactively offering and making reasonable adjustments as required
- Encouraging suppliers and partners to be Disability Confident
- Ensuring employees have sufficient disability equality awareness training
