At Liverpool Women’s we recognise that racism, including that which might present as unconscious bias, exists in our society, in our city and therefore exists within our organisation.
We do not shy away from this, and we are committed to learning and improving in partnership with our workforce, our patients, and our communities.
We recently published the findings of a report which detailed the tragic death of a black woman in our care. This report can be accessed via the following link to our February 2024 public board papers (p.108 onwards): https://liverpoolwomens.nhs.uk/media/5289/2024-02-08-trust-board-public-v1.pdf
The contents of this report generated media attention which we responded to with a Trust statement.
We acknowledge our failure to be more explicit in our language when talking about the existence and impact of racism in our organisation. We are sorry for the upset that this has caused. We recognise the seriousness and the scale of the change we need to make.
We openly and transparently shared the details of this tragic case within our board meeting for public scrutiny.
Our anti-racism programme, which we commenced in 2022, will continue and will be further shaped by the learning from recent events and from the feedback we have received over the last few days.
We want to extend our sincere condolences to the family involved in this tragic case. We are absolutely committed to learn, improve and embed change to ensure that no woman experiences any detriment in her care due to her ethnicity.