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Posted on 10 Sep 2023

Two Nottinghamshire Healthcare staff have been shortlisted in the 2023 National Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) Health and Care Awards. The National BAME Health and Care Awards celebrate BME staff and networks across British health and social care, who are making significant improvements in BME career development support and forging better healthcare initiatives for their communities.

Danielle Haddon, Clinical Lead Speech and Language Therapist has been shortlisted in the Clinician AHP Champion Award category. Maxine Davis, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Lead has been shortlisted in the Inspiring Diversity and Inclusion Lead category. 

Ifti Majid, Chief Executive at Nottinghamshire Healthcare said:

“Huge congratulations to Danielle and Maxine on being recognised in these national awards. As an organisation we are committed to a culture of diversity, fairness and equality for all our employees, potential employees, service users, carers and members of the public. 

“Both Danielle and Maxine work exceptionally hard and it is brilliant to see their important work in these areas recognised nationally, showcasing some of the fantastic work going on across all sectors in the field of equality, diversity and inclusion." 

Danielle has been shortlisted for her work on the Allied Health Professionals (AHP) Race Diversity Group. The group has been running for a few years now and is led by Danielle and Harvir Purawal, Dietitian.

Over the last few years the group has been a great source of support to AHPs of BME background, providing a space to share what has been happening across the Trust / AHP Professional Advisory Group (PAGs). It has also provided opportunities to influence at various levels across the Trust including policies, interview questions and innovation.

The AHP Race Diversity Group promotes and develops a culture of inclusion, and celebrates diversity and Allyship for all AHPs. It also promotes and improves opportunities for career advancement of our Trust AHP BME colleagues. As well as celebrating and sharing good practice of greater awareness of AHP diversity and improved experience of BME colleagues.

Danielle said:

“We are really proud of the group. It aims to raise awareness and learn from AHP diversity issues and experiences which impact on AHP service delivery, quality, staff experience, staff development, and retention. It also supports the agenda of widening participation and interest in AHP careers from different BME backgrounds.

“I am very passionate about language and communication needs within our client groups, but also in raising and developing the awareness of the contribution and impact AHPs make across our populations and diverse workforce. The group does really important work and we’re delighted to see it recognised nationally”.

Maxine is the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Lead for the Local Mental Health Services across Nottinghamshire Healthcare.  Since coming into post she has been an inspiring leader in ensuring that the voices of our diverse workforce are heard, and the voices of BME patients are acted upon.

Maxine has worked hard in addressing health Inequalities within her services, such as ensuring the patients’ demographic details are entered correctly within the patient clinical system, enabling the Trust to have far better ethnicity data in addressing health inequalities.

She has also been working on both a one-to-one basis and group approach to understand and support staff following a hate incident. Also ensuring incidents are reported and acted upon.

Often managers find it difficult to talk about race and race issues, However Maxine has worked hard to change the culture of this across her services.

Maxine said:

“I’m delighted to be recognised in these awards. By turning data into information, providing real patient and staff voices to support discussions and having a clear passion for EDI, I’ve been able to remove significant barriers in addressing inequalities. Huge improvements have been made by ensuring the tackling of EDI issues is everyone's business. It's keeping both staff and patients safer, and it is building on improvements which can be shared across the organisation.

The winners will be announced at The National BAME Health and Care Awards ceremony on 28 September.