Relevant standards
Our standards of education and training set out our expectations of education and training programmes to prepare studentslearners for professional practice. Among these standards is a clear duty to ensure that the education and training environments is are safe and supportive for all learners.
There must be effective and accessible arrangements in place to support the wellbeing and learning needs of learners in all settings.
The programme must implement and monitor equality and diversity policies in relation to learners.
There must be a thorough and effective process in place for receiving and responding to learner complaints.
There must be thorough and effective processes in place for ensuring the ongoing suitability of learners’ conduct, character and health.
There must be an effective process in place to support and enable learners to raise concerns about the safety and wellbeing of service users.
Practice-based learning must take place in an environment that is safe and supportive for learners and service users.
Assessments must provide an objective, fair and reliable measure of learners’ progression and achievement
There must be an effective process in place for learners to make academic appeals.
Read our Standards of education and training guidance for more information on the implementation of the standards.
We have also developed ‘quality indicators’ that are important to EDI in education and training. We encourage education providers to consider the indicators when developing approaches to EDI in education; however, these indicators are not standards. More information is available for education providers on our education provider hub.
What might this look like in practice?
In practice settings
Education providers must make sure that learners are not put at risk through practice-based learning does not cause a risk to learners. This includes having policies and procedures in place that allow providers to identify and deal with risks to the health and wellbeing of learners, such as aggression from service users, colleagues, or others.
Testimonial from a student in physiotherapy, Scotland
"My experience as someone who is neurodivergent and with non-visible disabilities within placements, university, and the workplace has been, unfortunately but not surprisingly, poor.
In university, I had a number of experiences where people assumed that just because I do something in a different way that I lack the ability to get my work done and succeed. Despite disclosing my diagnoses to lecturers, professors and my practice placement, I did not receive the proper accommodations and understanding that would have supported me. I did in one instance receive an apology from a lecturer which was greatly appreciated, and we were able to continue having a good professional relationship despite the hurt of the incident. But that apology didn’t prevent future incidents from happening in other settings.
Throughout my time at university, in the classroom and in placement settings, the expressions of my disabilities led to me or my behaviours being called “rambling and random”, “lazy”, “unprofessional” and “self-absorbed”. I was even told to re-consider if this was the profession I wanted to be in.
I was able to access support for these experiences if I reached out and reported my experiences. For example, my disability mentor at the university said that my experiences were unacceptable and encouraged me to change placement settings. But it should not have been my job to constantly remind everyone that I have a disability. Being told once should be enough. It’s often put on the person with the disabilities to educate others on their conditions, and sometimes even then, they don’t listen.
Everyone seems to be an advocate but is never able to act. It feels like everyone is just ticking a set of boxes without providing true help or assistance. It seems to me that everyone wants to be seen to be helping without actually helping.”
Example from an Art Psychotherapy programme, England
An art psychotherapy student identifying as LGBTQIA+ experienced verbal abuse and aggression from a patient while on placement in an acute mental health service supporting people experiencing a high acuity of mental health distress. The derogatory language and directed inhibition associated with the student's identity were expressed during a stabilisation phase of the care and treatment plan provided to the patient in the hospital.
The student notified their placement clinical supervisor and ward manager and brought the incident to their university based clinical supervision group. The placement clinical supervisor provided a useful reflective space and opportunities to plan the next steps to address the issues. The university group supervisor guided the student and peer learners through a sensitive discussion of balancing students' dignity at work with caring for patients who present as highly volatile, dysregulated and in an acute state of distress.
An action plan was co produced to ensure the student's concerns were addressed in placement, including:
• Empowering the student to address the experience using their agency and autonomy directly with the placement staff, with the support of the placement clinical manager and insights from university group clinical supervision
• Connecting the student with a dignity at work champion in placement and at university to gain support and guidance on managing the experience
• A joint discussion between the placement clinical supervisor/ward manager, the student, and the course team/group clinical supervisor to address the issues arising from the experience
• A discussion between the placement staff and course team to address the issues without the involvement of the student, based upon an agreed action plan between the student and course team.
The student decided to utilise the learning and advice gained in consultation with the university clinical supervision group and placement clinical supervisor and successfully resolved the situation with the placement staff and patient. They evidenced personal leadership and duty of care, as well as a highly developed reflective stance, which supported the student in:
• Improving student-patient and staff-student relationships in placement
• Addressing an experience of harassment and discriminatory behaviour
• Developing a compassionate, boundaried, and psychologically-minded approach to co-produced treatment design, supporting the patient's recovery journey
• Contributing to developing an improved approach to supporting staff and students' wellbeing following similar incidents
• Holding a creative reflective space for the ward staff team to explore their own similar experiences of discriminatory behaviour, using art psychotherapy specialist knowledge, skills and experience.
Supporting learners to speak up
Education providers have a duty to support and enable learners to raise concerns about discrimination. Health and care professionals and learners have a duty to speak up and act on concerns about safety and when they witness behaviours that are wrong. It's important that organisations take steps to create environments where people feel safe to do so. Learn more from a case study from Health Education and Improvement Wales on supporting learners to speak up.
Anyone can raise a concern about an HCPC approved education provider or programme, and we have guidance for whistleblowers reporting a wrongdoing in the public interest.
You can also take a look at our sexual safety hub and our resources on raising concerns for more information.
Example from education provider, England
Coventry University Health & Care (part of Coventry University) has been implementing a new EDI action plan to support learners who experience or witness discrimination.
'Our action plan has 4 priority areas:
1. Increase awareness, visibility and trust in our EDI processes
2. Embed best practice into all aspects of our learning environment
3. Build confidence and skills with our learners and staff in talking, promoting and managing best practice in EDI
4. Evaluate the impact of the EDI plan and aim to secure long term commitment to the role of the EDI champion
Our focus over the past 6 months has been to establish the infrastructure. We now have 21 EDI champions to lead this work. Our EDI champions are staff who have self-selected to take on this role to support learners across each programme.
The initial priority of the EDI Champions has been to raise awareness across their students and staff and to ensure there is easy access to resources for students.
We are working with the broader university structures to make sure that our work is collaborative and that our reporting arrangements are integrated with those of the wider university.
We are now working on identifying the best way to raise confidence levels across our staff group. We will likely have a mixture of e-learning and simulation to provide training and help build confidence.
We would like to see EDI become a natural part of a conversation and extend beyond just talking about raising concerns. While having a formal process for concerns is important, we also know that students often do not feel comfortable using those reporting processes. We want to develop this confidence in our learners, and we also want to empower staff and students to be confident in having tricky conversations about things like discrimination.
