More than 80 people gathered together to work towards equality for all in Glasgow on 6 February 2020 at Glasgow City HSCP’s annual Equalities event at The William Quarrier Scottish Epilepsy Centre.  The event served as an open platform to discuss all aspects of equality in Glasgow and in our HSCP. The event focussed on starting conversations between individuals, organisations and businesses to create equal opportunities and break down barriers to collectively achieve the level of equality that our city deserves. 

The event was led by Fiona Moss, Head of Health Improvement and Equalities who highlighted the importance of working together to improve positivity towards equality.  She said: “This was an honest and inspiring event where people were heartened by the progress we have made, and challenged us to do more, as it should be. We are asking staff, residents and partners to support us in setting our equalities outcomes for the next four years. We value the feedback we have received so far and welcome continuous engagement to ensure mainstreaming equality is at the heart of what we do.”

After Fiona’s presentation, Nicky Coia, Health Improvement Manager for Sandyford, gave an insight on the leading work that Sandyford did in order to achieve the LGBT Charter Gold Award and its continued success to make Sandyford a welcoming and accessible place for the LGBTQI+ community.

Paul Hull, Health Improvement Practitioner for Mental Health then took the stage and gave a heartfelt presentation via sign language to raise awareness for the need of mental health counselling for BSL users. He said: “With over 110,000 people that are hard of hearing or have mild and moderate deaf loss in Glasgow alone, there is need to support these individuals with appropriate mental health counselling as provided by LifeLink, who have recently launched a successful pilot to enable BSL Users to receive BSL friendly and appropriate mental health counselling.”

The last presentation of the day was delivered by Tressa Burke, Disability Activist and Equalities Campaigner for the Glasgow Disability Alliance. Her main focus was to highlight the importance of working together in partnership to improve the positive outcomes of disabled people in Glasgow. She said: “There needs to be greater resources for disabled people and working in partnership will help achieve this goal.”

The event was concluded by an hour-long table discussion in which many important conversations about equality were started, which will help shape the new Glasgow City HSCP Equality Outcomes 2020 - 2024 report, due to be launched at the end of April.

Equality matters to us all. What do you feel is important and should be reflected in this report? Please email stephanie.kirkham@ggc.scot.nhs.uk