Note: Due to some technical issues, the online payment process has been temporarily suspended. We intend to resolve these issues within the next fortnight at which point you will be notified. In the meantime if you wish to become an NHS BME member or book a place at the National conference 2010 please download the printable booking forms. Many apologies for any inconvenience caused.
Hope, Change and Bottom Up 2010
This conference marks the point in time when BME staff and their allies come together to insist that the NHS raises its game and affords everyone the standards of fairness expected of a modern professional institution. If you share this aspiration join us in our efforts to separate the NHS from its regrettable past. The NHS BME Network Launch Conference will discuss the current reality with influential decision-makers and present fresh approaches on how to promote racial equality in the NHS.
A decade after the Stephen Lawrence Report there is clear evidence that the NHS is failing to deliver on its Race Equality Duties. At a National BME Inaugural Conference on 5 June 2009 BME professionals and NHS senior managers came together unified in the position that ‘enough is enough’ and the NHS must be held accountable to the standards required of a 21st Century public body.
The Conference was championed by Dr Vivienne Lyfar-Cissé a Principal Clinical Biochemist who in the previous year had undertaken a Race Equality Service Review of the NHS organisations in the South East Coast Strategic Health Authority region. The Review report, published by the South East Coast BME Network, was the first of its kind and provided clear evidence that BME staff were consistently treated less favourably than their white/non-BME colleagues HSJ Articles. A subsequent study undertaken by the Health Service Journal showed almost identical trends nationwide.
Over 400 delegates agreed that racial discrimination in the NHS must be tackled as a matter of urgency and called for the establishment of an independent NHS BME Network. Since the conference a series of regional meetings, sponsored by the Care Quality Commission, have been held to obtain a sounding at the local level. The information gathered at these meetings have been used to create a National Operating Framework 2010/11 outlining the change priorities and action plan for the Network from a “bottom up” approach. If you have passion for change and a willingness to make a contribution, join the NHS BME Network today by clicking here
