Disability equality plan

Annex A

List of Actions

1. As part of our existing commitment to review grant making processes across Scottish Government, we will make improvements to DPOs’ experiences of going through the funding process. Our Fairer Funding principles respond to the long standing issues relating to late notification of grants and inflexible grant conditions. This reflects prior learning that showed flexible grant conditions, good relationships, and proportional reporting measures mean third sector stakeholders can respond quickly to support communities.

2. We will commission a roundtable with Scottish Funders Forum and DPOs to look at funding processes from the application stage to monitoring & evaluation, in order to improve disability competence and take into account the unique characteristics of DPOs.

3. We will strengthen our resilience and emergency planning to ensure appropriate, accessible, and timely responses for disabled people in times of crisis. Civil Contingencies Division and the Directorate for Equality, Inclusion and Human Rights will do so by working with DPOs to create a resourced plan setting out how we will enhance our disability competence and learn from the lived experience of disabled people.

4. Our transition to Net Zero and a climate resilient Scotland will be fair and just for disabled people. Working with DPOs and disabled people on the co-design of our Just Transition Plans, we will ensure that their needs are reflected in plans, and in wider Scottish Government climate change policy.

5. As part of the annual winter planning and readiness work, the needs of disabled people are considered by related policy teams as part of their identified priorities and actions for winter. Consultative roundtable exercises were held with representatives from DPOs and other social care stakeholders as part of the plan’s drafting phase to ensure the continued alignment of disabled people’s needs within identified priorities and actions outlined in the Health and Social Care Winter Preparedness Plan 2024-2025, published 24 September 2024.

6. We will undertake several actions to address the barriers faced by disabled people in rural and island communities. These actions will link into future partnership work being undertaken to improve holistic support in communities, through a revised approach to service design based on people’s needs:

• We will continue to work in an inclusive way with our rural communities to ensure the needs of disabled people living in a rural context are understood so they can be addressed. This community-led approach around rural need, and what is working, will in turn influence wider rural development policy and actions.
• We will work with DPOs to ensure disabled people’s needs are considered in island communities following the recent islands’ consultation and subsequent analysis.
• We will work with DPOs to develop DPO representation and build capacity in rural and island communities to provide vital support for disabled people in these areas.

7. We will develop, resource, and implement a plan to strengthen disability competence within the Scottish Government, in collaboration with our DPO partners. Our approach will be led by the lived experience of disabled people and framed by the social model of disability. This will enhance our policy making processes to maximise positive impact on the lives of disabled people in Scotland.

8. We will establish and facilitate a disabled people’s annual Cabinet takeover to provide a forum for disabled people and representative organisations to speak directly to Ministers about the issues that affect them. This is aimed at improving disability competence and leadership, and will provide additional accountability at Ministerial level.

9. We will ensure that there is opportunity for disabled people to hold us to account on progress by:

• Establishing a Disability Equality Delivery group, to oversee progress on the actions identified here.

This group will report on progress to Ministers and hold regular discussions with disabled people and the organisations that support them through a Disability Equality Collaborative providing direct dialogue between disabled people and Government.

• Holding an annual Cabinet takeover by disabled people to improve disability equality competency and leadership. This will also provide additional accountability at Ministerial level.
• A survey of disabled people in mid-2026/early 2027 to gather evidence of the impact of our actions.
• Publishing a progress report to determine where we need to focus our efforts in the 2026-2031 parliamentary session.

10. We will improve our approach to evidence-based policy making and align with the Equality Evidence Strategy 2023-2025 so we can measure improvements in disabled people’s lives. We will gather and publish new, robust, quantitative and qualitative evidence, that is both disability-specific and intersectional. To do this we will:

• Engage with DPOs to identify and agree priorities for filling evidence gaps.
• Work with DPOs to co-design research to fill priority gaps, working within available budget and other resource constraints.

11. To strengthen the accessibility of the social security system in Scotland for disabled people, we will continue to fund the Social Security Independent Advocacy Service and will conduct an evaluation of the Service to ensure it is reaching its maximum potential.

12. Our benefit take-up work involves developing ways to measure estimated take-up rates for disability benefits. Developing this information could help Scottish Government focus work to increase awareness and take-up of the disability benefits.

13. We will provide an additional £2 million in funding to support the delivery of the Disability Equality Plan, recognising the level of work needed to improve disabled people’s lives.

14. We will seek to improve access to vital support services for disabled people and increase disability competence in these services through:

• Extending the Advice in Accessible Settings (AiAS) programme to include 2 projects funded in 2024/25 with a specific focus on disabled people - a Glasgow Disability Alliance project and a second partnership between FAIR and The Action Group, both focusing on accessible advice for disabled people.
• Continuing to deliver our Cash First programme, focusing on inclusive and accessible Cash first support to tackle food insecurity, with two partnerships supporting disabled people.
• Exploring the possibility of a partnership project with DPOs and one or more advice agencies. This could include DPOs providing disability competence training for the agencies as well as supporting advice provision for disabled people.

15. Disabled People’s organisations are represented on the independent Minimum Income Guarantee Expert Group, and we will support the group’s wider engagement with DPOs as required. This will ensure the experiences of disabled people are considered as part of the development of the group’s full report. As a result, the report’s recommendations should reflect how a MIG could best support disabled people. The Scottish Government act as a secretariat for this group whose recommendations will be formed independently and will be carefully considered.

16. The Scottish Government believes that a social tariff mechanism is the best way to ensure that energy consumers, including disabled people, are protected against high costs and can afford their energy needs. Through a recently established working group including energy suppliers, consumer organisations, and DPOs we will co-design a social tariff mechanism that can show that this policy can work. We repeatedly called on the previous UK Government to introduce a social tariff as a way of providing support for those who need it the most, and we are optimistic that we can have a more constructive discussion with the current UK administration on delivering this crucial policy.

17. In parallel, we will work collaboratively with energy suppliers and consumer organisations to increase access to and awareness of existing energy initiatives to maximise their impact.

18. By strengthening our understanding of the unique barriers faced by disabled people to connect, access, and actively participate in the digital world, we will ensure that disabled people’s needs are supported in the next delivery phase of the ‘Connecting Scotland’ programme.

19. We recognise the increased barriers to accessing healthcare for people with disabling mental health conditions; their significantly reduced life expectancy; and the psychological impacts of disability. Additionally, poverty and discrimination related to disability are known to be exacerbating factors of poor mental health. Therefore, in delivering our newly published Mental Health and Wellbeing Delivery Plan we will:

• Consider the issues faced by disabled people when scoping, planning, and implementing key actions highlighted in the Inequality Action Table.
• Improve access to, and experience of, mental health supports and services. To achieve this, we will work closely with the Equality and Human Rights Forum and prioritise actions under Priorities 4 and 7.
• Ensure that disability is captured and published as an intersectional cross variable in patient experience surveys including mental health.
• To ensure that the workforce is diverse, skilled, supported, and sustainable we will implement the Mental Health and Wellbeing Workforce Action Plan. This includes specific actions to support disabled people in the workplace and those receiving care, recognising the valuable role people with lived experience can play in creating compassionate and accessible services for disabled people.
• Implement the actions set out in the Delivery and Workforce Action Plans Impact Assessments.
• Establish a Mental Health and Capacity Reform Programme looking at the embedding of human rights across mental health services and making improvements to the legislative framework to better uphold and protect human rights.

20. We will build on the successful reopening of the Independent Living Fund in April 2024 by continuing to work in partnership with ILF Scotland, DPOs, and other stakeholders during its first year of operation to improve and develop access routes to the fund that are more closely aligned to a human rights-based approach and remove/overcome established barriers to access.

21. The Scottish Government will work with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA) to identify options for the removal of non-residential care charges as part of wider work with partners on social care improvement.

22. We will engage with DPOs:

• To continue to explore ways to better protect the human rights of disabled people within Scotland’s devolved powers.
• To explore options for better accountability and oversight of disabled people’s human rights that considers existing Commissioners who provide this and takes account of proposals for a potential Disability Commissioner.
• On proposals to strengthen the role of the Scottish Human Rights Commission through a future Human Rights Bill.
• To ensure widespread communication of the impacts of a future Human Rights Bill for disabled people, recognising the vital role of DPOs in promoting and realising rights for all disabled people.