Consultation to amend the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 to include Integration Joint Boards: EQIA

Stage 1: Framing

Results of framing exercise

A number of protected characteristics are more prevalent among health and social care service users, workers and carers. Notably, the vast majority of users of particular services such as care homes are older people; women represent a higher proportion of health and social care jobs and unpaid carers compared to men. People with a disability use more health and social care services and have significantly poorer health outcomes and behaviours, on a wide range of measures, than the general population. How race interacts with health and social care is complex and there are very wide variations in outcomes and experiences for different groups.

By including Integration Joint Boards as first responders, we have an opportunity to promote greater equality when it comes to emergency planning in health and social care services. The policy will provide the opportunity to ensure that the groups of people who are disproportionately represented in health and social care will be better represented in risk assessments, emergency plans, business continuity arrangements and in arrangements to make emergency information available to the public.

When making arrangements for emergency planning, each Integration Joint Board will need to give consideration to certain groups. What these are specifically will depend on local demographics and circumstances, e.g. Integration Joint Boards in an area with a higher proportion of older people will need to ensure that they have suitable communication methods to make key emergency information available. As public authorities in Scotland, Integration Joint Boards must already comply with the public sector equality duty set out in the Equality Act 2010 to take action to eradicate discrimination and to pro-actively promote equality of opportunity.

Extent/Level of EQIA required

The evidence captured in the next section entitled 'Data and Evidence gathering, involvement and consultation' has been drawn from a broad range of Scottish Government and NHSScotland sources.

After reviewing the policy and the initial evidence gathering, it is recommended that a lighter touch EQIA is appropriate for the following reasons:

• No significant potential negative impacts have been identified. In particular service users would not be impacted by the complementary planning activities that would be put in place by the Integration Joint Boards;
• Integration Joint Boards, the bodies affected by the policy, must already comply with the equality duties set out in the Equality Act 2010 and must already include community and local population views, this would complement the work already carried out by the Integration Joint Board.

A technical consultation was placed on Citizen's Space as well as the Scottish Government consultation web pages. As a technical consultation it was directed to the Integration Joint Board Chief Officers, the Chief Executives of the Health Boards and Local Authorities as well as some key Third Sector organisations.

The consultation identified no additional impacts on protected characteristics for service users or employees of the Integration Joint Boards or the wider public.