Equality Impact Assessment – Reopening Of The Independent Living Fund (ILF)

Stage 4: Decision making and monitoring

Identifying and establishing any required mitigating action

Have positive or negative impacts been identified for any of the equality groups?

Positive impacts have been identified for those with disabilities.

There is a potential indirect negative impact in terms of age, for people who are under 16.

Another indirect negative is setting access principles which will exclude some disabled people who do not meet all of the criteria.

Is the policy directly or indirectly discriminatory under the Equality Act 2010^[3]?

No - this will be kept under review once the policy has commenced.

If the policy is indirectly discriminatory, how is it justified under the relevant legislation?

N/A

If not justified, what mitigating action will be undertaken?

N/A

Describing how Equality Impact analysis has shaped the policy making process

The co-production working group which has been setup to develop this policy, has membership drawn from the key stakeholder interests, including the Scottish Human Rights Commission, disabled people’s organisations, statutory partners, and representative bodies (including those representing disabled people and carers).

The Working Group additionally includes members who have direct knowledge and understanding of living with a disability with high support needs, as a disabled person or as a carer. The membership is aimed to ensure that disabled people, carers, and advocacy organisations are given a strong voice, in co-production with government, ILF Scotland and statutory partners, to develop the overall policy and make decisions about how the available funds for reopening ILF can be used to gain maximum independent living benefits.

In addition there has been stakeholder engagement over the policy development, including engagement with disabled people, carers, and their representatives.

Discussions of the group have been very mindful of equalities duties and the need to avoid creating inequities. Therefore recommendations by the group to Ministers around this policy have been made taking equalities into account.

Monitoring and Review

The policy will be monitored following it’s commencement, by the ILF Sponsorship team and ILF Scotland, working closely with the key stakeholders on the co-production group.

Part of this work will include re-visiting the access principles for the policy and consideration as to whether children under the age of 16 can be included.