Whole Family Wellbeing Funding Programme - EQIA

Recommendations and Conclusion

The Programme aims to positively affect any child or young person and their families, irrespective of sex, disability, sexuality, race, religion or belief. Our vision is to provide access to the help they need, where and when they need it, and for as long as they need, free from stigma, in line with Covid-19 Children and Families Collective Leadership Group Holistic Family Support: Vision and Blueprint for Change (www.gov.scot). The Programme takes a holistic view of the term family – adoptive, biological, foster, kinship, extended, composite and others i.e. settings and homes that have felt like family and that some children and young people may belong to more than one family.

The aim of the Programme is centred on how to support system change. It will continue to take this approach in collaboration with partners, and focus on addressing the key systemic barriers to ensuring effective holistic family support. As such, it is envisaged that the Programme will not detrimentally impact on equality groups, and will progress the vision that all families are getting the right help, at the right time, for as long as they needed.

Our Equality Impact analysis has confirmed that our Holistic whole family support: routemap and national principles - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) has given us a broad-based approach for supporting families regardless of equality group (age, disability, sex, pregnancy and maternity, gender reassignment, sexual orientation, race, religion or belief and poverty).

We are confident that as well as having no intended negative implications for equality groups, the Programme design ensures that equality groups will be positively impacted. As decisions are based on local need, however, the level of positive impact on different equality groups will vary by local area.

The WFWF Programme has been designed to be flexible (in line with the National Principles of Holistic Family Support and the ambition to #KeepThePromise). This allows CSPPs overall responsibility as to how their individual allocations are utilised locally, in order to build local service capacity for change and transform family support services. However, we have set out clear criteria for allocating WFWF to local areas (as detailed in Element 1 allocation letters), with one of the criteria being that all services funded by WFWF must undergo relevant impact assessments, including EQIAs and CRWIAs, as appropriate. Similarly a criteria for Element 2 and Element 3 funding is that planned spending must undergo relevant impact assessments, including EQIAs and CRWIAs.

The policy making process is further shaped by the ongoing Programme evaluation. As we begin to scope out year 3 plus of the evaluation, we will continue to ensure that robust primary and secondary data is gathered, which evidences the positive impacts on equality groups and in turns helps inform the future policy direction of the Programme.