Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what support is available to deaf people to access employment within the NHS.

The NHS People Plan commits to creating a diverse workforce and reforming staff recruitment and promotion practices to ensure greater inclusivity.

The Workforce Disability Equality Standard (WDES) is a mandated framework of ten measures, including recruitment, which compares the workplace experiences of disabled and non-disabled staff. National Health Service organisations use the data collected to develop action plans and it provides comparative information to demonstrate progress. Following the WDES’s data analysis report in 2021, recommendations include developing opportunities for local unemployed disabled people to gain work experience within NHS organisations and convening inclusive recruitment panels to include disabled staff, particularly for senior roles.