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Yvonne Coghill's question - does the NHS want a positive action programme? - has provoked a particular memory. As someone who spent a couple of years or more helping with the design and steering through University accreditation for a BME ADVANCE leadership development programme, and then spending a happy couple of years teaching the programme, I was struck by a number of things. First, those who attended the programme were middle managers from across the BME spectrum in London and their enthusiasm and attentiveness and desire to learn was simply uplifting. Second, the managers responsible for sponsoring their staff attended and participated with the programme, enabling participants to undertake their projects and apply their learning in practice. Third, the participants lacked confidence, not knowledge nor experience. In fact, most on the programme were very highly qualified, more so, I would say, than their counterparts from anglo-saxon backgrounds. Fourth, a good proportion of those on the programmes went on to gain promotion and remain within the NHS. Fifth, the programme was positvely evaluated by The Health Foundation. Sixth, the programme was pulled after two cohorts. Plans to roll the programme out across London disappeared.
The time and effort in taking the programme through accreditation with a University has all been lost.
I don't know who made the decision to pull the programme, but it appears to have been a decision taken on a basis unconnected to the programme. Equally, all the materials for the programme haven't been used and applied in other BME programmes, so a decision to abandon everything has been taken somewhere.
Whilst it's true that positive action has made a difference to the balance of gender distribution for managers, this has yet to happen in other situations.
I do see that positive action is a means to an end - the end being the enrichment of NHS management by engaging the skills, knowledge and experience of a highly talented and capable pool of ability. I don't see positive action as a means of achieving representation.