General Optical Council Consults On Equality Monitoring Scheme, UK

Main Category: Eye Health / Blindness
Article Date: 24 Apr 2008 - 1:00 PDT

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The General Optical Council published a consultation on plans to implement a new scheme for monitoring equality and diversity data.

Collecting and analysing information about registrants' gender, ethnicity and disabilities will allow the Council to meet new statutory requirements to report to Parliament on equality issues, and to meet its equality and diversity objectives.

GOC registrar Peter Coe said, "It's critical that we get our monitoring scheme right. Having this data will help us to make sure that regulation is fair and reduce inequality. We'd like stakeholders to tell us what they think of the scheme, so that we can make sure it works effectively and provides the right outcomes."

The consultation asks for stakeholders' views on five principles underpinning the scheme:

1.It is important to obtain a high response rate so that analysis is both accurate and proportionate.

2.It is essential that the Council maintains data which is accurate and up to date.

3.An individual's equality monitoring data should never be made publicly available.

4.Internal GOC access to individuals' equality and diversity data should be restricted and controlled.

5.Where possible, the GOC should coordinate monitoring systems with other regulators to allow statistical comparisons across the healthcare professions.

The consultation document and draft monitoring form are available from the GOC website, here.

About the General Optical Council

The GOC is the regulator for the optical professions in the UK. Its purpose is to protect the public by promoting high standards of education and conduct amongst opticians. The Council currently registers around 22,000 optometrists, dispensing opticians, student opticians and optical businesses.

General Optical Council