A fairer Scotland for all: race equality action plan and highlight report 2017-2021

Health and Home

Minority ethnic communities in Scotland have equality in physical and mental health as far as is achievable, have effective healthcare appropriate to their needs and experience fewer inequalities in housing and home life..

Our Voice Framework

CEMVO was invited to join the Our Voice Framework Development & Oversight Group to help ensure that minority ethnic voices are heard and meaningfully involved in improving health and social care services. The Our Voice Citizens' Panel, recruited last year to involve members of the public in helping to shape national policy, is broadly representative of the population of Scotland including the minority ethnic population.

Mental Health Strategy

Over 2015 and 2016, Scottish Government undertook extensive engagement activities leading to the development of the Mental Health Strategy. The Scottish Association for Mental Health ( SAMH) and Voices of Experience ( VOX) hosted events on our behalf in early 2016, and the Scottish Youth Parliament ( SYP) ran an event to gather the views of young people on mental health issues. For each of these events, we asked the lead organisations to consider the diversity and representative nature of the attendees. In our work with VOX we specifically asked that 5-7 representatives per group covered diversity interests. Some of our prior discussions with VOX involved asking them to engage with BEMIS and CEMVO when finalising their attendee lists.

We carefully considered equality issues when we were compiling the Strategy, including issues relating to ethnic minorities, and the evidence we considered informed the final Strategy text.

Health and Social Care

To help promote the embedding of race equality in new health and social care partnership integrated models, a Race Equality and Integration project has been funded by Scottish Government in three partnership areas via CEMVO to support partnerships to develop policies that take full account of race equality, involving minority ethnic communities. Lessons from this project will be considered to offer recommendations to all partnerships on how best to work with ethnic minority communities.

Work is in progress to build knowledge and understanding of how Health & Social Care Integration is implemented locally and the impact it has on minority ethnic communities, and to increase the understanding amongst minority ethnic groups about the Self Directed Support process.

Diversity of Scotland's Health Workforce

Boards collect and publish data on the ethnicity of their workforce as part of their mainstreaming reporting. All Boards carried out an analysis of occupational segregation by race, which will provide improved intelligence on the distribution of staff from different ethnic backgrounds across the workforce. The occupational segregation analysis was published on 30 April 2017. Boards also publish annual equality staff monitoring data as part of their workforce plans.

Additionally, the Modern Apprenticeship Network in NHSScotland has been working with BEMIS on ways to improve the attraction of young people from minority ethnic communities to MAs in NHSScotland. Enhancing the attractiveness of NHS careers for young people from minority ethnic backgrounds and increasing recruitment from within this cohort has been made a strategic priority for current and forthcoming youth employment activity. A new Careers website has been developed to improve attraction to the range of NHS careers.

Housing inequalities

In June 2016, the Scottish Housing Regulator ( SHR) published the outcome of its thematic inquiry on equality. The report's emphasis was on ethnicity and highlighted the importance of all landlords collecting, assessing, and reporting equality information. In September 2016, SHR also published the outcome of a further thematic inquiry highlighting the importance of social landlords being open and accessible about their services and decision-making. The report looks at how social landlords ensure that tenants and other service users can communicate with them and get the information they need about their landlord's services. The inquiry also considered landlords' awareness of potential translation and language barriers, and the support they provided to their tenants and other service users to overcome them. Both reports share positive practice and make recommendations for landlords on how and where improvements could be made.

In November 2016 SHR published a new poster for Gypsy/Travellers who use sites provided by social landlords. The poster aims to raise awareness of the standards landlords are expected to deliver against the Scottish Social Housing Charter, such as how quickly and how well repairs are dealt with, the amount of rent people are expected to pay, how the landlord should communicate, and how the landlord is performing. The poster follows the Regulator's national thematic inquiry report published in November 2015 which highlighted the need for landlords to improve services to Gypsy/Travellers. The Regulator has worked directly with Gypsy/Travellers on its National Panel of Tenants and Service Users to develop the poster. Panel members' feedback has been included and they welcomed the poster as a positive way to raise awareness.

As part of the Scottish Government's review of the Scottish Social Housing Charter an "Involving All" consultation programme was carried out to assess its impacts with tenants who might normally be excluded or find it difficult to get involved.

The consultation included sessions with minority ethnic tenants to inform the Charter review. The revised Charter came into effect on 1 April 2017 and strengthened the Equality outcome in the Charter by making it clear that this outcome should be reflected across all of a social landlords activities.