East Sussex’s assessment has helped improve services
In 2021, we published the East Sussex health needs assessment, reviewing the health, care and wellbeing needs of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (plus all other sexual orientation and gender identities) population in East Sussex.
This was the first time a specific LGBTQ+ needs assessment had been done for the county.
This project and report were developed with a steering group that had representation from council departments, NHS organisations, and the voluntary sector, as well as community representatives.
The report brings together data from local health and care services, the police, and findings from focus groups and a community survey of more than 400 people.
The needs assessment highlights that LGBTQ+ people have many of the same health and care needs as their heterosexual and cisgender peers.
However, they also have several health disparities. Three notable ones are:
- high levels of LGBTQ+ discrimination in educational and workplace settings
- higher rates of mental health conditions
- concerns about care needs and fears about discrimination in later life.
It was reassuring to learn that local LGBTQ+ people are happy to share their sexual orientation and gender identity with health and care professionals, if asked in an appropriate manner.
We co-produced and published some recommendations in the report.
Examples of recommendations include the better collection of sexual orientation and gender identity data, and actions to make services and settings more inclusive.
Working in partnership with NHS Sussex and other local partners, we are already running several projects to meet these identified needs.
The ‘Ensuring Everyone Counts Project’ seeks to improve the collection of protected characteristic data in local health and care services.
The ‘Inclusion Award Project’ supports local health and care services to become more inclusive. The scheme is run by Switchboard, a Sussex-based LGBTQ+ charity.
A number of primary care services and community services have been progressing through the steps to be awarded an Inclusion Award.
Since the publication of the assessment, we have also supported the ‘Creating inclusive residential care for LGBTQ+ elders (CIRCLE)’ research project, which is funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research’s Applied Research Collaboration Kent, Surrey and Sussex, led by Dr Jolie Keemink and other researchers from the University of Kent.
It aims to understand how providers of residential care for older people can improve their LGBTQ+ inclusive care offer.
Since we published our needs assessment, other local authorities have contacted us, wanting to find out more about how our work could inform theirs.
Some great progress has been made to improve the health and wellbeing of LGBTQ+ communities, but there is still much more we can all do to achieve health equity.
The East Sussex LGBTQ+ Needs Assessment is published on the East Sussex Joint Strategic Needs Assessment website. For more information, please email [email protected]