Self-Isolation Support Grant: equality impact assessment

Sources of data

The Scottish Government drew on a wide range of sources to understand the impact of restrictions on those with protected characteristics. These sources include statistics published by both the Scottish Government Economist (OCEA) and the Office of National Statistics, as well as insights from the Annual Population Survey and Equality Evidence Finder – a Scottish Government and its Agencies source to collect, analyse and publish equality evidence across a wide range of policy areas and equality characteristics. We also have access to information that has been returned directly from LAs on SISGs covering to July 2022, and information that the SG collects related to the Scottish Welfare Fund covering to March 2022. As information on the Scottish Welfare Fund currently covers only to March 2022 we have used the information returned directly on SISG by LAs to get a picture on equalities data to July 2022.

Every effort is made to ensure that Equality Impact Assessments (EQIA) are published timeously. However, the speed at which it was necessary to ensure mechanisms were in place for supporting the impacts of Covid-19 restrictions, resulted in delays to completing EQIAs for a number of support funds, including SISG. We developed the monitoring tools to capture data, and memorialised policy changes and costs as each iteration was made to SISG.

The National Contact Centre (NCC) was established by NHS Scotland in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The NCC was a new service hosted within NHS, National Services Scotland (NSS) which was designed to support the contact tracing function.

The use of data^[8] for Contact Tracing, along with Testing, TTIs (Track, Trace, Isolate) were actions within the Test and Protect Strategy, which was a public health measure designed to break chains of transmission of Covid-19 in the community.

The Centre also gathered data on those who were required to self-isolate or advised to stay at home. Once the individual had granted consent, NCC then shared this information with Local Authorities. Local Authorities then used this information to identify people on their systems to provide them with support and/or help to access funding during periods of self-isolation. NCC provide us with data on who is booking a PCR test.