The Local Equality Advisory Forum (LEAF) for North of Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent was established in 2016 and were pleased that this group will continue its work in supporting the ICB Equality Diversity and Inclusion agenda. The forum is a group of people who represent communities with protected characteristics and vulnerabilities and will continue to act as critical friends to the ICB. They advise on policies, public campaign material, service change proposals and inform our decision making. The group also includes representatives from vulnerable communities such as the homeless and asylum seekers and refugees and it includes people who can help us to think more broadly about how we can reduce health inequalities.

As the members of LEAF are asked to join from local organisations who support people from seldom heard groups, we have access to their wider networks, and they kindly support us by promoting information or circulating consultations on our behalf. This means we can gather views and feedback from a wide range of diverse people. Our commissioners attend the meetings when they are considering changing the way health services are delivered so that we can understand whether there would be any unintended consequences from the changes or any mitigations we would need to put in place to minimise adverse impact on particular groups. The Forum is Chaired by a CCG Lay person with responsibility for Patient and Public Involvement and we make sure that there is a clinician (doctor) at each meeting to answer any medical questions.

Some of the areas of work that LEAF have previously influenced include:-

• Equality Diversity & Inclusion Strategy
• It’s OK to Ask – our health literacy work
• Medicines Matter – Our campaign to reduce waste medicine
• Proposals to change Physiotherapy, Podiatry, Musculoskeletal, IAPT, Cancer and end of life services amongst many others
• Health services for older people
• Access to adult mental health services with the Citizen’s Jury
• LGBT+ issues in Primary Care
• Pregnancy & Maternity
• Extended Access to GP Services
• Integrated Care Hubs and the Future of Local Health Services
• Cancer screening
• Deaf Awareness and a BSL video
• Our stakeholder mapping
• Access and contact methods
• Faith and belief with regard to clinical procedures

You can find out about the role of LEAF in the  Terms of Reference (278 KB)