Self harm strategy and action plan 2023 to 2027: equality impact assessment

The Scope of the EQIA

In the drafting of this EQIA, due regard has been given to the three requirements of the equality duty: to eliminate unlawful discrimination; to advance equality of opportunity between people who share a protected characteristic, and those who don’t; and to encourage or foster good relations between people who share a protected characteristic, and those who don't. The EQIA gathered a range of data and information to inform the analysis of the likely impact of the self-harm strategy and action plan, including through the following methods:

• Creation of a Self-Harm Strategy Design Group, made up of people with diverse lived and living experience of self-harm, alongside services that support them, ensuring that lived experience is at the heart of our work to create the strategy and action plan.
• Ensuring that the Self-Harm Strategy Design Group included representation from groups with higher risk of self-harm, namely organisations representing LGBT communities and neurodiverse people.
• Creation of a new Self-Harm Data and Evidence Group, to help inform and advise on the development of the strategy, ensuring it is built on the best available data and evidence.
• Drawing on the learning from the new direct self-harm support services funded by Scottish Government, which have inbuilt monitoring and evaluation as part of their delivery.

Within the Self-Harm Data and Evidence Group, the following work was carried out which has also informed this EQIA:

• A review of the social determinants of self-harm, carried out by academic members of the Data and Evidence Group.
• A meta-ethnographic review of qualitative evidence of self-harm, commissioned by the Scottish Government and carried out by academic members of the Data and Evidence Group.
• A review of research related to the risk and protective factors for self-harm in children and young people, conducted by Public Health Scotland (PHS).

We have also carried out several rounds of careful engagement at different stages of strategy development, which we have used to develop our EQIA, including:

• Engagement with people with lived and living experience of self-harm and organisations that support them.
• A series of 'roundtables' with a range of support services, including some focusing on supporting marginalised communities.
• Several 'conversation cafes' hosted on our behalf by the Scottish Recovery Network, with people with lived experience of self-harm, and those who care for them.
• Engagement with peer workers at the Scottish Government-funded self-harm service pilots run by Penumbra, and learning from the impact reports the service produced.
• Engagement, on several occasions, with the Mental Health Equality and Human Rights Forum as a collective, and with individual members.

We also reviewed evidence gathered in the development of the Suicide Prevention Strategy, where relevant, as well as the Scottish Government's Equality Evidence Finder.