As a co-production support officer at Essex County Council, Pranay Nama’s role is to support the adult social care team through sharing information about services on internal communication channels, and planning in-person and online events. He loves the social elements of the job, and, as someone with cerebral palsy, he values the council’s inclusive approach, describing his colleagues as “supportive and understanding” and saying that they have been happy to make adjustments, including “accompanying me to work events, adjusting workload and providing one-to-one feedback”.
Essex is a large local authority – and every year its adult social care team supports a diverse population of around 16,000 people who need help with daily living tasks. If it wants to provide the best possible care to communities, it knows that every member of the adult social care team, regardless of ethnicity, disability, age or sexuality, must be supported to do their job and to have opportunities for progression in line with the organisation’s new equality, diversity and inclusion strategy.
The council is launching a new workforce ambassador programme, which will provide a forum for employees to support each other and speak directly with leaders about projects that affect the workforce. Adult social care was the first to adopt the programme, which will be rolled out throughout the organisation.
As a workforce ambassador since July this year, Nama says his role includes “listening to colleagues, identifying topics, and understanding their issues”. These topics are then shared with other workforce ambassadors in regular meetings. Jane Norris, a service manager in adult social care who helps lead the programme, says it reflects the authority’s core values towards staff and service users: “As a manager, I want my staff to go out and treat people well, to be respectful and to be kind. One of the ways I can ensure that is to do the same for my staff, and the people I work with.”
While the workforce ambassador programme offers a route by which all staff can provide feedback, the adult social care team has also introduced the Quest programme, which is designed to solicit the views of staff with a protected characteristic.
“The Quests evolved from conversations with our workforce after the murder of George Floyd,” says Alison Ansell, director of adult social care at Essex County Council. “These conversations were a call to action due to the racism and discrimination that exists in our society and organisation. As a result the Quests were born.” So far there have been four Quests: for race, disability, LGBTQIA+ and age.
Photograph: Belinda Howell/Getty Images
Norris explains how the first Quest worked: “We got a group of 10 volunteers, and we released them from their duties for about six weeks. In that time, we asked them to go out and immerse themselves into the service and speak to people, and explore areas where we could improve, but also to identify areas of really good practice and positivity that we could build on.”
When a Quest is completed, the volunteers (Questers) share their findings and recommendations with the adult social care leadership team and the corporate leadership team, who then agree on what action to take.
Nama was one of seven people across adult social care to take part in the disability Quest, which was launched in April 2022. As part of the team, he solicited the views of staff who have a disability, through questionnaires and small group discussions.
The disability Questers came up with recommendations for improvement in nine areas: recruitment and progression, accessibility, access to work support and communications, IT inclusion, training, policies and occupational health. The varied recommendations ranged from implementing disability awareness training for managers to making information in adult social care accessible for people with visual impairments, as well as making sure that backup support workers were available when an employee’s support worker was on holiday.
A similar process to solicit staff views was undertaken by the LGBTQIA+ Questers. This Quest also came up with a series of recommendations, including more gender-neutral toilets, mandatory face-to-face training to raise awareness and adopting a zero-tolerance policy towards discrimination. As with the other Quests, staff have appreciated the opportunity to open up, says Norris: “People can communicate and talk about issues much more comfortably.”
The next step will be to conduct more Quests, including one on mental health. The programme has had a positive impact in helping staff throughout adult social care feel heard, says Norris.
“It gave people a chance to see that as an employer, we are interested in equality and interested in ensuring that our workforce is diverse, and there is opportunity for all.”
Join Essex County Council’s talent community to keep up to date with job opportunities
