The Equality Act 2010

On 1^st October 2010 the new Equality Act came into force. The act was introduced to simplify and streamline the previous equality legislation. 

 

The protected characteristics are as follows:

·         Age

·         Disability

·         Gender reassignment

·         Race

·         Religion or belief

·         Sex

·         Sexual orientation

·         Marriage and civil partnership

·         Pregnancy and maternity

 

It is essential that all your policies and procedures are up to date to meet the new legislation. You will need to review all nursery procedures and feed these changes back to staff and parents to enable the change to be implemented. Involving your staff with the logistics of the procedures and how this will work in practice will enable you to not only gain further insight into how this will work in practice but will also support buy in from the staff and enable the changes to be implemented quickly and smoothly.

 

If you are a member of the NDNA you can access templates for a large variety of policies and procedures on the members only area of the website. These can be used to check the contents of your policies and tailored to meet your individual needs.

 

It is important that all of your staff receive training on how the Equality Act impacts on their practice. 

 

Taken from the NDNA factsheet – November 2010. For more information please visit www.ndna.org.uk