Purpose: To promote allied health professional roles with equity, diversity, inclusion and belonging at its heart. We are aware of the data and experiences of AHP colleagues with protected characteristics and wanted to ensure we represent the diversity within our professions. An important element of making our workforce more diverse and representative of the communities we serve, is to ensure there are role models for school age children to aspire to.
The Aspiring Allies Careers Promotion Campaign includes a website: www.aspiringallies.co.uk and brochure (Aspiring-Allies-1.pdf) and social media (Twitter: @AlliesAspiring, Instagram @Aspiring_Allies and TikTok @Aspiring_Allies) .
The website includes a ‘Find your AHP’ quiz which was designed by Occupational Therapy students using the ‘Interest Checklist’ as a starting point, role descriptions and importantly an ‘inspirational stories’ section which promotes role model experiences of finding, studying, working and developing within their professions.
The campaign continues to grow in response to relevent topics, national campaign, system needs and ongoing engagement with our AHP students who regularly contribute to the 'news' section of the website and in the creation of socia media content.
Purpose: To promote allied health professional roles with equity, diversity, inclusion and belonging at its heart. To provide equitable access to work experience to support applications onto AHP University courses and Apprenticeships.
Programmes can be accessed here:
AHP: Virtual Work Based Learning Programme - Aspiring Allies
Occupational Therapy: Occupational Therapy Virtual Work Based Learning Programme - Aspiring Allies
Physiotherapy: Physiotherapy Virtual Work Based Learning - Aspiring Allies
Further programmes for Dietetics and Operating Department Practitioners are in development.
Purpose: To establish a network of allied health professionals passionate about promoting their profession and ensuring that this network is representative of the population we serve in West Yorkshire. To link with careers promotion programmes within each Place so that we can in-reach into schools and career events.
The AHP Faculty has developed a leadership placement which aims to work collaboratively with AHP Learners and external partners across West Yorkshire to improve equity, diversity, inclusion and belonging in practice learning and AHP workforce, across all protected characteristics.
Aims of this placement:
To bridge the attainment gap for learners with protected characteristics in higher education and AHP career progression
To create resources to promote equity, diversity, inclusion and belonging
Provide learners with the opportunity to explore and understand own leadership and to develop leadership skills such as:
develop presentation and organization skills
develop communication skills
give learners an insight into non-clinical roles
experience working in a team and managing projects
The AHP Faculty curretly runs approximately four cohorts of this placement each year, supporting up to 10 students at a time.
Purpose: As a result of an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion project within the West Yorkshire AHP Faculty and the need to increase cultural competency of our workforce to support our colleagues and service users, it was highlighted that there is no central resource for Ramadan and Diet. The attached resource on the BDA website (Ramadan and diet | British Dietetic Association (BDA)) has been developed to fill this gap.
Purpose: Following the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion project within the West Yorkshire AHP Faculty, it was highlighted that significant improvements could be made to make recruitment processes more inclusion. The attached resource has been developed by Freya Sledding from Airedale and shared across the AHP Faculty.
Diversity and Inclusion best practice guide to recruitment (pdf)
