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SECTION FOUR: Progressing the Equality Strategy: Making a Difference through the Way we Work

Mainstreaming Equality

Mainstreaming equality is a long-term process. Change will not be achieved overnight. In phase 1 (2000-2002) of the Equality Strategy we concentrated on improving data and information, increasing consultation and dialogue with equality groups, raising awareness on equality and developing the processes to help mainstreaming in policy and spending plans. We have made considerable progress in the two years since the Strategy was adopted.

Update on commitments in the Equality Strategy:

Housing and Education (Pilot Areas)

The Scottish Executive has focused its mainstreaming approach in two areas of Executive policy - housing and school education.

Housing

The Housing work began in September 2000 during the final stages of the consultation on the Housing Bill. Officials in housing and the Equality Unit worked closely together and with external equality bodies and organisations. An equality audit of the consultation on the Housing bill was undertaken and detailed discussions held to determine the best way to ensure that equality issues were addressed in the legislation. This partnership was successful. Equality bodies contributed actively and with strong Ministerial support and parliamentary intervention, the legislation incorporated a number of specific references to equality. The Act put a duty on Scottish Ministers (including Communities Scotland) and local authorities to encourage equal opportunities in their housing functions. The Act also included the introduction of broader definitions of family, a number of provisions relating to disability and strengthening of provisions to tackle racial harassment.

The lessons learnt in phase I will be incorporated into the guidance on mainstreaming equality into policy making. The increased sensitivity to equality issues has led to the Housing division considering in some detail how it will take forward the mainstreaming of equality in its future work programme.

Phase II will involve a short-term secondment to take forward the range of equalities issues across the Executive's work on housing. As we indicated in our response to the Race Equality Advisory Forum (REAF) report 'Committing to Race Equality' published in 2002, this work will complement the equality work which is already in hand. The Executive is providing funding towards an Equal Opportunities Good Practice Award for housing providers run by CIH. The first award was made in March 2002.

Communities Scotland which became an agency of the Executive in November 2001 will be striving to ensure that race equality is addressed across all functions and activities. It has a Race Equality Policy supported by regional action plans.

Action has been taken to support a black and minority ethnic-led housing association and a further £5 million made available for minority ethnic communities in housing which is below the Tolerable Standard.

The proportion of properties owned and managed by Registered Social Landlords which are let to minority ethnic households will be monitored.

Education

The Schools Group is the second of the two areas of the Scottish Executive to provide a focus for mainstreaming equality. The work in this pilot is at an early stage.

The Schools Group has designated two officials with responsibility for providing a focus on equality work. These officials have worked closely with the Equality Unit.

The following developments have taken place since the launch of the Equality Strategy.

Legislation

• Some key equality provisions were incorporated into the Standards in Scotland's Schools Act providing a strong context to promote equal opportunities.
• Parliament passed the Education (Disability Strategies and Pupils' Educational Records) (Scotland) Act 2002.
• The Executive has published for consultation the draft Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Bill. The draft Bill aims to update the system for providing additional support for children who require it.

Teacher Education

Equality is reflected in the new benchmark standards for initial teacher education introduced in autumn 2001. These require courses that will enable students to:

• Demonstrate an understanding of the principles of equality and social justice and of the need for anti-discriminatory practices.
• Value and demonstrate a commitment to social justice and inclusion and
• Demonstrate that they value and promote fairness and justice and adopt anti-discriminatory practices in respect of gender, sexual orientation, race, disability, age, religion and culture.

Anti-racism education

• The Scottish Executive is supporting work on anti-racism education in the curriculum. The Executive funded a project aimed at providing staff in pre-schools, special schools, primary and secondary schools with materials to support more effective delivery of anti-racism education. This material took the form of a CD-ROM entitled 'Educating for Race Equality - a Toolkit for Scottish Teachers', which was launched on 3 December 2002. Further materials are being produced for schools to link in with the Executive's anti-racism campaign - 'One Scotland: Many Cultures' ( www.onescotland.com )
• The Executive has increased its funding for the Centre for Education for Racial Equality in Scotland (CERES). CERES liaises with education authorities and schools to assist with formulating, developing and refining policies for multicultural and anti-racist education.
• The Scottish Executive provided £45,000 in 2001 to support the development of the Equal Futures project being run by Children in Scotland in conjunction with the Commission for Racial Equality. Equal Futures aims to raise awareness of race equality issues with schoolchildren and young people. The project engaged local authorities and schools in activities around race equality and culminated in a highly successful conference on race equality in November 2001 involving over 300 children from across Scotland. A further conference was held in 2002. Following the success of the conference and as part of the Executive's One Scotland: Many cultures campaign , the Executive is providing £150,000 funding over two years to the 'Equal Futures' project.

Gypsies/Travellers

• The Scottish Executive funds the Scottish Traveller Education Programme (STEP) which works with government and other relevant bodies in support of policy development for the inclusion of the needs of Gypsies and Travellers.
• The Scottish Executive commissioned STEP to produce, in conjunction with Learning and Teaching Scotland, guidance for local authorities and schools on inclusive education approaches for Gypsies and Travellers, set within the context of interrupted learning.

Refugees

• The Scottish Executive has funded CERES and the ABN (Anti-bullying Network) to produce a resource for schools that focuses on helping them to share good practice in addressing issues relating to asylum seeker and refugee children, such as bullying. This resource was launched in January 2002. This comes in addition to the ongoing support provided to schools by the anti-bullying network.

Disability

• One of national priorities for education is to promote equality and enable every child to benefit from education. This is particularly targeted at pupils with disabilities and special educational needs.
• Education providers must prepare accessibility strategies to improve access to education for children with disabilities. This is required by the Education (Disability Strategies and Pupils' Records) (Scotland) Act 2002.
• Executive is supporting the Minority Ethnic Learning Disabilities Initiative to develop a resource pack for parents and families of minority ethnic children with special needs and a training resource pack for professionals working with minority ethnic children.

Improving Dialogue: Improving Policy-Consultation with Equality Groups

To mainstream effectively, policy makers need to understand the needs of different groups of people and the impact of policy proposals on these groups. This information will come from a variety of sources including consultation and dialogue with the equality groups and communities.

The Scottish Executive organised several 'grassroots' consultative events in summer 2000. Feedback from these events helped the Executive produce its guidance on consultation with equality groups. The publication entitled Good Practice Guidance - Consultation with Equalities Groups is designed to assist policy makers within the Executive to adopt good practice when consulting with equality groups.

In the preliminary report we outlined the Executive's proposals to develop consultative mechanisms with the range of equality interests. Since then there have been a number of developments:

Update on commitments in the Equality Strategy

Equality and the Budget

The full Scottish Budget Equality Statement is attached in Annex A.

Making changes to policy to improve equal opportunities is only half the story. Making sure that the money goes with the policy is the other half. For some time now the Executive has been exploring ways in which it can link its work on mainstreaming equality into policy with the distribution of resources.

In 2000, the then Minister for Finance and Local Government established the Equality Proofing Budget Advisory Group to advise the Executive on how it might take this work forward. The Group met for the first time in November 2000. The members of the groups are the Scottish Women's Budget Group (formerly Engender Women's Budget Group), EOC, DRC, CRE, Equality Network and officials from the Finance Department and Equality Unit. Arthur Midwinter, the advisor to the Finance Committee sits as an observer. In future, it is hoped that a researcher from Scottish Parliament's Information Centre will be able to attend to provide liaison with the Scottish Parliament.

Activities to date have included:

• Commissioning research on the integration of equality into the budget process. This will shortly be available on the internet.
• Holding an expert seminar on mainstreaming equality and gender budgeting in October 2001. The seminar was addressed by leading academics in the field and was attended by external interests and Scottish Executive officials. It was a very successful event.
• Holding a seminar with Equal Opportunities Committee in October 2002 to develop a shared understanding on the work on equality proofing the budget.
• Establishing international contact on this area of activity. Contact was established with the Government of Canada and a case study on the Scottish Executive's work on equality and the budget was presented in December 2002 to an international conference in the autonomous region of the Basque country.

Budget Documents

A number of improvements in the presentation of information on equality and spending have taken place in the budget documents following guidance issued to departments.

• The Annual Expenditure Review in 2002 highlighted the equality work being done in housing and education.
• The Draft Budget published in October 2002 refers to equality in its introduction.
• Closing the Opportunity Gap: Scottish Budget for 2003-2006 was published in October 2002 outlining the measures being proposed in the Scottish Budget for 2003-2006 to Close the Opportunity Gap including equality.
• An Equality Statement on the budget is being published as part of this annual equality report.

We recognise that we have a long way to go and we are working closely with the Equality Proofing Budget Advisory Group to identify the best way to proceed. Over the next few months, the Executive has agreed with the EPBAG that it will look at undertaking a gender impact assessment in housing and education and work with Health Department to investigate which tools might be best employed in the Scottish context.

Knowing the Facts: Making the Difference - Research and Data

Equalities Research

We need robust and reliable data and information if we are to have evidence to support policy making, understand the needs our diverse communities and to assess the impact of policies on them.

Update on commitments in the Equality Strategy:

Since the publication of the Equality Strategy a range of research has been conducted which has taken our work forward and assisted departments with the mainstreaming of equality.

Crosscutting research work has included:

• Good practice guidance on consultation with equality groups published in June 2002. This provides advice on how best to engage with those 'harder to reach' groups whose views are not routinely sought in the development of public policy.
• A literature review of translating, interpreting and communication support services published in 2002. This was designed to inform the Executive's Translation, Interpreting and Communication Support (TICS) Services Framework Group in its work to develop a national cross-sectoral framework of standards for these services.
• Research on the international comparisons on equality proofing procedures in drafting legislation published in 2002.
• Supporting the design of a module for inclusion in the 2002 Scottish Social Attitudes Survey to assess and explore public attitudes to discrimination in Scotland. Analysis of the results will be available in 2003.

Work focused on particular groups has included:

• An audit of ethnic minority research literature published in 2001. This discussed key research themes, highlighted significant gaps and made recommendations for future research.
• An analysis of the first year of data from the Scottish Household Survey relating to older people in Scotland published in 2001.
• An exploration of women and men in the professions published in 2001 and the report of a conference on researching women in rural Scotland published in 2002.
• An analysis of a programme of focus groups in which the grassroots views of issues of importance to ethnic minority communities were gathered is due to be published in spring 2003.
• A research study of the impacts of the 1999 Immigration and Asylum Act on devolved services and asylum seekers in Scotland is due to be published by spring 2003.
• A study to explore the need for, and possible approaches to, the collection of data on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities in Scotland is due to report in 2003.

Work focused on particular policy areas has included:

• A study of family mediation services for minority ethnic families, exploring the cultural issues associated with marriage, separation and divorce in minority ethnic families was published in 2001.
• A study of minority ethnic pupil experiences of school identifying key factors relating to ethnic diversity which promote or restrict inclusion is due to report in summer 2003.
• A range of studies exploring police stop and search among white and minority ethnic young people, racist crime and victimisation, the experience of black/minority ethnic police officers as well as an analysis of the ethnic minority booster sample of the Scottish Crime Survey were published in 2002.

Studies were undertaken on transport provision for disabled people and women and transport. These assisted the development of transport policy and the production of guidance in these areas.

Research Support

The research work of the Executive on equalities has been assisted by external input from experts in the field. Following the establishment of the Women's Consultative Forum in 1998, the Executive set up the Women's Issues Research Advisory Group. This group provided a steer for the work of the consultant on women's issues who was contracted to the Executive from 1998 until 2001. The Executive is grateful for the time and effort given by the members of that group.

A dedicated Equalities Research Team was created in the Executive's Development Department in April 2002. The core remit of the Team is to develop a research evidence base to support the Equality Strategy & to promote the mainstreaming of research across Social Research in the Scottish Executive. The Equalities Research Team is also developing processes to ensure that all Social Research across the Executive considers equality perspectives in research design, data collection and analysis.

The Team also produces and disseminates the Social Inclusion Research Bulletin which provides an update on research across the Executive relating to social justice and equality issues. Bulletin No. 7 published in March 2002 focused specifically on equalities research and the latest Bulletin No. 8 was published in September 2002.

Copies of research publications highlighted above are available in electronic format and are accessible from the Scottish Executive website: www.scotland.gov.uk/socialresearch

Equality Statistics

In order to implement effective policies, to monitor the outcome of these policies and to improve service delivery, it is important that relevant and timely statistics are available. This statement holds true across the whole range of policy development and service delivery, and no more so than in the area covered by the Scottish Executive's Equality Unit.

The Equality Strategy covers a range of equality areas and five are particularly relevant for our statistical work namely, age, gender, sexual orientation, disability and ethnicity. The requirement on the statistics service is to provide detailed information for each of these areas plus analysis and interpretation of the interactions between two or more groups together with other contextual information such as geography and socio-economic issues. Work is being taken forward in all areas excluding sexual orientation, where considerable research of how appropriate and informed information could be collected is required. (See research section.)

The information collected by central government on Scotland has until recently been heavily focused on identifying what is happening at a national or large administrative area level. The information would contain some disaggregation by the equality dimensions, but the key policy interest was in aggregated figures rather than in the more detailed disaggregation by population cohorts.

Information is made available through Censuses, surveys and administrative processes. Within each of these sources there is the opportunity to collect a range of data across the equality dimensions. There are however significant constraining factors including cost, sample size, feasibility of questions, confidentiality of individual responses and technical problems such as data exchange and data sharing.

The requirements for statistical information underpinning the Equality Strategy were therefore significantly greater than the information being provided by the statistical service at the end of the 1990s. The strategy would require considerably improved disaggregation of data, a more consistent and harmonised approach to data collection and dissemination, and a clear commitment to improve the availability of data over the short, medium and long term.

In order to meet this requirement for improved statistics the Scottish Executive statistics service committed itself in the Scottish Executive Statistical Plan 2000-01 to:

In addition to this general statement there were a number of specific areas where improved equality data were required. These included:

• Social Justice Milestones: The data used to inform progress against the milestones should be disaggregated by age, gender, ethnicity and disability where appropriate and work should be taken forward to improve the availability of data across these dimensions.
• Statistical publications and outputs: Improving and increasing the availability of equality data across all its outputs.
• Equality definitions: Developing a long-term strategy for the improved collection of ethnicity, national identity and disability information. The requirements set out in the Race Relations Amendment Act clearly require the monitoring and equality proofing of policies and the statistics service has a significant role in taking forward the required work.
• Publications: Increasing the availability of data disaggregated by the equality dimensions.
• Data collection: Data collection should be developed to increase the ability to carry out high quality and fit for purpose analyses across the equality dimensions.

In taking forward these commitments the statistical service has over the last couple of years produced a number of products and put in train a range of actions that will improve the availability and quality of statistical information in the short, medium and long term. It is true to say that information on age and gender has been easier to obtain, but work has been progressed to cover the other equality dimensions. The following areas of work have benefited from increased equality information.

• Social Justice Milestones: Data have been disaggregated where data quality and availability allows across the 29 milestones.
• Statistical publications and outputs: disaggregation of data across the equality dimensions where possible has been provided in statistical publications.
• Equality definitions: The definitions around ethnicity and disability are a source of concern. The statistics service is discussing the long-term solution for the collection of ethnicity and national identity data with colleagues across central government. Data collectors, providers and users will be consulted. We are also beginning to tackle the collection of appropriate disability information.

Publications

A range of publications providing information specifically on equality groups has been produced:

• Guide to Equality Data Sources was first produced in 2001 and is updated annually.
• A set of equality fact-cards was produced in 2001.
• Statistical Profile: Men and Women was published in March 2001.
• Social Focus on Women and Men was published in March 2002.
• Scottish Household Survey: This major survey introduced in 1999 collects a variety of transport, social justice and housing information from 15,000 households per annum. This survey has provided valuable information across the equality dimensions and is frequently reviewed to ensure that the data provided increase in quality and fit for purpose.
• Scottish Neighbourhood Statistics: This is a long-term project focusing on the development and dissemination via the web of information at a local area level. The driver behind the work is the broad Social Justice agenda, of which the Equality Strategy is a key element. Data are being developed that will allow for vastly increased analysis of population cohorts and geographic areas. It is clearly a priority to ensure that where possible - allowing for confidentiality - data across the equality dimensions are developed.
• The statistics service has implemented a database for use across the SE that contains details of the range of data collection activities carried out by the SE. The collection of information across the equality dimensions is recorded.

Copies of statistics publications highlighted above are available in electronic format and are accessible from the Scottish Executive website: www.scotland.gov.uk/stats

Update on commitments in the Equality Strategy:

Communications

Improving communication and access to information and services is vital if we want to improve participation.

Translation and Interpreting

Issues around language provision and translating and interpreting services are key to ensuring access for all. The provision of translating and interpreting services is an important as it cuts across many different areas of life, from access to services and information through to sports and leisure pursuits and business advice.

The Executive convened a Group to examine the provision of translation, interpreting and communication support (TICS) across the public sector in Scotland. The TICS Group included representatives from local government, health boards, the police, the Commission for Race Equality, the Disability Rights Commission and the Scottish Refugee Council. The TICS Group undertook a major exercise in mapping out the issues and commissioning the publication of a research report by the Scottish Centre for Information on Language Teaching and Research. CILT undertook a literature review of research, policy and practice relating to translating, interpreting and communication support services across the public sector in Scotland. This was published on 12 March 2002.

The TICS Group has set the agenda for the next more active stage of TICS work, which is being taken forward by a development worker, appointed in July 2002. The Executive has agreed to provide funding of £60,000 over the next 2 years.

The development worker is undertaking a wide range of activities including the establishment of a database of translators and interpreters in Scotland; promotion of best practice by public sector bodies; and development of a training needs analysis and training strategy.

The Executive has worked closely with the Scottish Forum for Translating, Interpreting and Communication. The Forum has produced a set of Guidelines for public sector bodies. The Guidelines were published formally with support from the Executive on 12 March 2002. http://www.scotland.gov.uk/library5/social/sticf-00.asp

The Scottish Refugee Integration Forum (SRIF), Chaired by the Minister for Social Justice, also looked at the provision of TICS for asylum seekers and refugees. SRIF held a focus group on TICS in summer 2002 and has included recommendations in its Draft Action Plan. The draft Plan was issued for consultation and the final paper is due to be published at the beginning of 2003.

British Sign Language and Linguistic Access Working Group

A British Sign Language and Linguistic Access Working Group was established in January 2001. The membership of the Group includes the Scottish Council on Deafness, British Deaf Association, Scottish Association of Sign Language Interpreters, the Disability Rights Commission and officials from departments across the Executive. The Working Group is looking at wider linguistic access for deaf people and those affected by deafness. It is assisting the Executive determine what needs to be done over the long-term on issues such as provision and training of BSL interpreters so that access to services, education and information can be improved.

Alternative Formats

The Scottish Executive contributed to UK Government guidance on production of materials in alternative formats published in February 2001. The Executive is considering providing further guidance on alternative formats. The Freedom of Information Act statutory guidance public bodies is being prepared with alternative formats in mind. This is being done in conjunction with the Disability Rights Commission, the RNIB, the Commission for Racial Equality and others.

Update on commitments in the Equality Strategy:

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