We believe that in order to gain and maintain the confidence of the people we serve, we must recognise and engage effectively with all South Yorkshire communities, and this includes our own workforce. 

We examine and review the ways in which we work, so that we can constantly identify areas for improvement and meet the diverse needs of service users and staff even more effectively.

Equality Schemes are statutory documents. They serve the purpose of setting out the vision and principles of how the organisation intends to manage specific aspects of diversity in its work and consideration of diversity and equality issues is an integral part of all policing functions. 

We have taken the decision to consolidate separate equality schemes (race, disability and gender) into a Single Equality Scheme 2008-11, which allowed us to identify areas of commonality, reduce repetition of task or bureaucracy and combine the component action plans, collating all outstanding work and merging it, together with necessary new projects into a single, cohesive structure.

The Single Equality Scheme has been published on the South Yorkshire Police Intranet.  The scheme:

• includes an action plan, which sets out specific accomplishments we intend to achieve during the lifetime of the scheme
• sets out the force’s equality vision, and F.I.R.S.T. principles (fairness, integrity, respect, sincerity and trust), which are the professional behaviour values of the organisation and applied to all dimensions of our work
• is regularly reviewed and updated, in order to ensure it remains a living document.

The Equality Standard for the Police Service is a performance management framework, specific to diversity, which enables police forces to gauge their performance, identify any gaps and design improvements according to the outcomes set out in the framework. The Equality Standard for the Police Service describes three levels of performance in each of 22 categories or areas of activity. Through its use, we will be able to determine whether we are managing diversity at 'Baseline', ‘Integrating’ or ‘Excelling’ levels.  We will be using our Corporate Health Check process to ensure implementation.

The Equality Act 2010 came into force on the 1st October 2010 and brings together over 116 separate pieces of legislation. The Act, amongst other changes, strengthens disabled people's protection from discrimination and strengthens the protection for pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers.

The Equality Act introduced nine protected characteristics replacing the previous seven strands of diversity.  Draft Codes of Practice have been produced by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, these are currently awaiting an Order from the Government, bringing them into force. 

The Equality Act also introduces a Public Sector Equality Duty from April 2011 which will prompt a revision of our Single Equality Scheme.  Guidance for this duty is expected to be published in January 2011, and will bring about changes in the way we publish a range of equality data relating to both workforce and services provided, as well as the setting of equality outcome objectives for the force.