Much has happened since my last blog post in January, including the publication of the NHS white paper, alongside which, is a consultation open on the new NHS Provider Selection Regime. I would urge you to read and respond to these publications. We will be responding as a Professional Body.
Our joint audiology & otology guidance was reviewed in January, with few amends made. The next review date is in May, when I am hoping things will start to look a little different for us all. Our quarterly Heads of Service webinar was well-attended at the end of January; the next one will be April. These webinars are available to view again here.
Our Board Directors have hit the ground running in the new year. A couple of new committees have been established so please have a think if you can spare some time to work with us. Our Professional Development Board Lead is looking for people to join their team. If you have an interest in professional development issues and specifically helping us with some of our established projects such as our partnerships with Ida and the BCIG, online training modules and webinars and our mentoring scheme, please drop an email to admin@baaudiology.org
Our new EDI committee was officially established last Monday. Several BAA members have been working with us over the last few months to assess what we need to do to make sure all our members have equitable access to all aspects of the BAA. This team have now officially become our committee to take this important work forward. They were joined, last Monday, by an EDI consultant who has been providing invaluable input to our work. We would like to thank the team, who we will start to introduce you to on our website over the coming weeks.
There are two very important first steps we need to take with our EDI work, which we need to reach out to you, our members, to support us with. We really do need to know more about you. Our membership sign-up page will be changed slightly to try to capture more details as people join the BAA. Our consultant explained that this really is important information for us to know, otherwise we really do not know you! We will be adding questions about gender, ethnicity, and disability, amongst others.
Once the database has been updated, we will then launch a membership survey to help with our analysis. These surveys are anonymous and optional, but we would very much hope you will be able to take the time to respond.
We know we are asking a big favour from you here; you will be asked for personal data that we will, of course, take great care of. We genuinely want to make progress and until we have this base data to start us on this journey to ensuring equitable access, we really cannot measure or report any progress.
This work really does benefit all of us, so we thank you now for any input you can provide to make BAA an equitable, diverse, and inclusive professional body for everyone.
Do not forget we are here for you. Please ask for support – if we can help, we will.
Stay safe and stay well.
Kath Lewis