Trust bosses used racist language in interviews, says CQC

Herefordshire and Worcestershire Health and Care Trust had its overall and well-led ratings downgraded from “good” to “requires improvement” following an inspection concluding in June last year, the CQC said.

Inspectors said “some senior leaders” from the mental health and community provider had referred to people from minority backgrounds as “those people”. They said they were also told about “a senior leader” who had described the recruitment of three staff from a minority background as an “influx”.

The CQC said it had “serious concerns” about how staff from minority groups were represented and treated, with its report, published today, stating the senior leaders’ reference to people from minority backgrounds as “those people” was made in an interview with inspectors about diversity.

Staff also told inspectors there was a fear of consequences should they report discrimination and how staff from a white background felt they were “entitled” to staff networks to support their views and equality.

CQC chiefs wrote they were “concerned that senior leaders told us they were unaware of incidents of discrimination and poor culture, only to later be informed that the same senior leaders were involved in working groups to address [such] issues”.

Some department leaders told inspectors there was a “tick box” approach to the equality, diversity and inclusion agenda and the trust was “slow to act” on closed cultures.

The CQC also highlighted that the trust’s workforce, race and equality standard data for 2022 had showed staff from an ethnic minority background were 4.95 times more likely to enter the formal disciplinary process, significantly above the national average of 1.14 times.

The inspectorate said the trust had started to address some of the cultural concerns.

HWHCT said in a statement it was pleased the CQC had recognised staff’s “kindness and compassion” and improvements made following previous inspections. However, it added: “The board recognises that some improvements are needed. We are absolutely committed to the delivery of improvements… and have made significant progress against the improvement plan since the inspection and will continue to prioritise this in the months ahead.”

Addressing the issues raised about racist language and a closed culture, the trust said: “Any discrimination towards our colleagues is unacceptable. We take all feedback seriously and will respond quickly to incidents where staff feel that they have been treated unfairly because of their protected characteristic.”