1. Does your social care management system (the database or other systems your organisation uses to record personal data for disabled adults in connection with your duties under the Care Act 2014) include a field for the characteristic of *gender*?
Yes.
a. Are there a defined set of responses from which to select, and if so, what are they?
Yes, they are Unknown, Unborn, Male, Female and Indeterminate.
b. Please provide any documents, such as notes of meetings, internal correspondence etc, recording how you determined what should and should not be included in the defined set of responses.
Devon County Council does not hold this information.
For information about Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, please see our website at the following link Home – Equality, Diversity and Inclusion.
c. How is it populated for adults who lack capacity to express a view on their own gender?
A conversation with skilled workers to support this conversation, we also have easy read forms that are printed off for people with learning disabilities for example.
2. Does it include a field for the protected characteristic of *sex*?
Yes, as well as asking someone what their gender is, we ask what someone’s identified gender is.
a. Are there a defined set of responses from which to select, and if so, what are they?
Yes, they are Female, Male, Non-Binary or Other and Unknown.
b. Is it mandatory to populate this field with some value, or can it be left void/completely blank?
This is not a mandatory field.
3. Do you have policies or procedures that have the objective of ensuring that users of your services (commissioned or provided directly) of the female sex is who require assistance with intimate care receive this from carers of the female sex. If so, please provide copies.
People are able to express preferences about how their care is delivered, and when commissioning care we will take that into account. This includes the preferred time of day care is received and the gender of the person delivering care. We will not always be able to meet all preferences, but we will ensure that a persons’ care needs are met.
4. Please provide copies of any policies specific to individual Equality Act protected characteristics (excluding marriage and civil partnership) and the unprotected characteristic of gender of care workers and/or service users, i.e any policies specific individually to
- gender reassignment/trans identified care workers and/or service users
- the age of care workers and/or care workers and/or service users
- the disability of care workers and/or service users
- the pregnancy of care workers and/or service users, but there is no need to provide copies of HR employee maternity leave policies
- the race of care workers and/or service users
- the religion or belief of care workers and/or service users
- the sex of care workers and or service users
- the sexual orientation of care workers and/or service users
- the non protected characteristic of gender of care works and/or service users
This can be found at the following link Policies and procedures.
We also have our Choice in Care Policy Choice in Care Policy – Adult Social Care.