Equality evidence strategy 2023 to 2025: child rights and wellbeing impact assessment stage 1 screening

Child Rights and Wellbeing Impact Assessment (CRWIA) for Scotland’s Equality Evidence Strategy 2023-2025: CRWIA Stage 1 – Screening

Disclaimer

This draft document is an initial assessment of the impact of Scotland’s Equality Evidence Strategy 2023-2025 and Scottish Government will continue to review and update this document where required during the implementation of actions. Any future iterations will reflect an increased understanding of these impacts as the amount of data and research available continues to grow.

This impact assessment should be read in conjunction with the Equality Impact Assessment and the Fairer Scotland Duty Assessment (as set out in the Equality Statement)

Brief Summary

In April 2021 the Scottish Government launched its Equality Data Improvement Programme (EDIP) to take action to make equality evidence more wide-ranging and robust, enabling policy makers to develop sound, inclusive policy. A stronger and more complete equality evidence base will support the collective effort across the Scottish public sector to fulfil the requirements of the Public Sector Equality Duty. The EDIPhelped to ensure that Scotland’s next equality evidence strategy is based on a good understanding of the challenges and opportunities, building on the achievements of the Equality Evidence Strategy 2017-2021.

The Scottish Government carried out a public consultation in summer 2022 on its draft improvement action plan and commissioned an external analysis of responses. The responses received through this consultation helped to shape this plan, which formed the basis of the new Equality Evidence Strategy 2023-2025. Alongside the written consultation, the Scottish Government also carried out a series of stakeholder engagement events to further understand what practical steps it can take to address the barriers to collecting, analysing and using equality evidence.

The Equality Evidence Strategy, covering the years 2023 to 2025, presents a refreshed vision for equality evidence improvement and a comprehensive action plan for improvement activity.

The Equality Evidence Strategy 2023-2025 vision is:

To tackle structural and intersectional inequality of outcomes, Scotland’s equality evidence base will become more accessible, wide-ranging and robust. A stronger evidence base will enable the development and delivery of sound, inclusive policies and services and enable the measurement of improvements in the lives of all of Scotland’s people.

This is framed around three vision principles:

• more robust and comprehensive data and evidence will be gathered on the intersecting^[1] characteristics of people in Scotland across a range of outcomes
• equality evidence will be made more easily accessible so users will be able to access what they need, when they need it
• good practice will be shared and promoted to support increased confidence and competence in the production and use of robust equality evidence

The strategy presents 45 actions that will be implemented by analysts across all areas of the Scottish Government and NRS to strengthen the evidence collected, analysed, published and used across the characteristics covered by the strategy.

Start date of relevant proposal: The Equality Evidence Strategy 2023-2025 was published on 24 March 2023

Start date of CRWIA process: The gathering of evidence that informed impact assessments, including this CRWIA, commenced in September 2020 with the commissioning of research that explored the range of equality data collected by public sector organisations. This Screening Form was completed followed the conclusion of the analysis of the public consultation and engagement events, and signed off ahead of publication of the strategy.

Which aspects of the relevant proposal currently affects or will affect children and young people up to the age of 18?

The Equality Evidence Strategy 2023-2025 covers evidence on children and young people under the age characteristic. In addition, specific actions in the Equality Evidence Strategy 2023-2025 action plan that we expect will affect children and young people include:

• Action 1: Looked after children
• Action 2: Child protection
• Action 3: Growing up in Scotland
• Action 4: School leaver attainment
• Action 17: Various: poverty related surveys/associated analytical resources
• Action 31: Core Data for Tier 2 and Tier 3 Weight Management Services for Children/Young People and Adults in Scotland

As mentioned above, the Equality Evidence Strategy 2023-2025 provides a vision, and set of accompanying vision principles, and an action plan for equality evidence improvement over the next three years. While there are actions in the strategy that focus on improvements to data collected about or from children and young people up to the age of 18, the implications of these actions should be considered as they are implemented. Decisions will be made on whether CRWIAs will therefore be carried out as that work is taken forward and as policies using the data are developed.

An interim progress review of the Equality Evidence Strategy 2023-2025 will be carried out in late 2024. As part of this, we will reconsider the need to carry out impact assessments including CRWIA.