Equality and Diversity
Publicity Line
CFOA has, and will continue to promote Equality and Diversity as a headline issue for fire services as it recognises that continued improvement of service delivery will only be achieved with a workforce that understands and can engage with the communities it serves.
England 
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Wales
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Scotland
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Northern Ireland
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The terms of the whole debate should move from one based on the statistical make-up of workforces to one of that demonstrates the strength of the business case.
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Fire authorities will be encouraged to undertake and strive to improve their assessment levels within the Equality Standard for Local Government.
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All new and existing policies and practices should be impact assessed and this is especially important at Authority and Government Department level.
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The Equality and Diversity Project Board has been reshaped as a National Diversity Partnership and this partnership will deliver tangible outcomes such as sharing impact assessment good practice, national recruitment support and further research.
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Training is critical at all levels and CFOA has established a Regional Champions Network to broaden the support it can provide to FRS’s and assist with member training.
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CFOA has been involved in discussions about the Graduate Entry Scheme and have encouraged CLG to look carefully at existing schemes already in use in fire services that support ‘talent development’ to ensure that they can work alongside each other.
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CFOA would like to emphasise that there has been a considerable amount of outstanding work in many fire services to address the past underperformance in this area and that celebrating successes and sharing best practices will be important if the service is to move forward as a whole.
