At NHS Hack Day inclusivity is important to us. In 2018 (our last NHS Hack Day in Cardiff) we had aFairer Tech Event grant from doteveryone which we used to work with Barod to bring a group from Carmarthenshire People First, an organisation which supports adults with learning disabilities, to NHS Hack Day. You can watch Angie and I talking about what they got out of the event, and what we learned below.
We run NHS Hack Days at weekends and this has definite pros and cons. Our events our volunteer-run, on tight budgets. At the weekends we can use spaces that might be used during the week, and have people attend who might not be able to get permission to participate from employers during the week. But the downside is that many people have caring responsibilities at the weekend. We have always been happy for attendees to bring along their children – and sometimes they have joined in the hacking (though Ada, below, was a little to young for this in 2015).
In November we were asked by Leo if we would be able to offer childcare in the same was as PyConUK (an organisation for advancement of the programming language Python) do at their Cardiff Conference. This was a great headstart as one of the organisers of PyConUK, Kristian Glass, is also an NHS Hack Day volunteer.
He was able to put us in contact with Mobile Creche Wales who agreed to provide a creche for both days of NHS Hack Day. The next building block was sponsorship from BJSS who have recently opened an office in Cardiff. We also have great support from Claire McConnell, the building manager at the Hadyn Ellis Building in Cardiff University; this will be the 6th NHS Hack Day that Prof James Morgan and I have hosted here and we hope it will be our best yet.
