Disabled People's Cabinet Forum: report

2. Background

Scotland’s Disability Equality Plan (June 2025) commits to advancing disability equality by placing disabled people’s lived experience at the centre of policy design and delivery. Its core premise is that progress happens when disabled people shape decisions from the outset.

Grounded in the principle “nothing about us, without us,” and aligned with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the Plan recognises disabled people as partners, leaders, and rights‑holders. It prioritises structural change so that disabled people’s insights materially influence agendas, resource allocation, and outcomes.

Inclusion Scotland, Glasgow Disability Alliance, and Disability Equality Scotland co‑produced the first iteration over two years, drawing on lived‑experience evidence to shape early development.

The Scottish Government will sustain this partnership throughout the Plan’s lifetime, including evaluation, scrutiny, and continuous improvement through new accountability structures.

Core priorities of the Disability Equality Plan (Phase One)

1. Financial support for disabled households. The Plan tackles the disproportionately high living costs and poverty experienced by disabled people by expanding access to advice and rights‑based support and removing barriers that prevent people from securing the financial assistance to which they are entitled.

2. Inclusion, participation, and independent living. The Plan commits to enabling full participation in everyday life by improving accessibility, strengthening social care and community support, enhancing digital inclusion, and embedding rights‑based policymaking across government so disabled people’s needs are considered as standard.

3. Improving mental health. The Plan addresses the unequal burden of poor mental health by expanding tailored provision, improving coordination between services, and building leadership and workforce understanding of the mental‑health challenges that disabled people face.

Key actions

To deliver these priorities, the Plan sets out practical measures including tailored mental‑health support for disabled people and expanded advice and support services covering both financial guidance and rights‑based assistance. It invests in training to build disability competence across government, ensuring policy and delivery teams can recognise impacts and respond confidently.

The Plan also enhances scrutiny by enabling DPOs to hold government to account at senior levels and commits to ongoing co‑design with DPOs and lived‑experience groups to shape the next phase of a longer‑term disability equality strategy.

Social Model of Disability

The Scottish Government’s approach is underpinned by the Social Model of Disability, which recognises that people are disabled not by their impairments but by the barriers created by society - whether for example physical, attitudinal, structural, or institutional. This model shifts attention away from “fixing,” “curing” or “rehabilitating” individuals to ‘fit’ with society, and instead focuses on removing the obstacles that restrict participation, create discrimination and cause barriers to independent living.

Closely aligned with this is the framework of disability justice, which emphasises that the oppressions disabled people experience cannot be understood in isolation from other oppressions faced by some disabled people such as racism, sexism, and homophobia. Disability Justice calls systems that address the cumulative impacts of inequality, discrimination, and poverty to work together instead of operating in silos.

Together, these perspectives reinforce the central principle of the Disability Equality Plan: that meaningful progress requires structural change, redistribution of power, and cohesive policy‑making shaped by the lived experience and leadership of disabled people. They provide a coherent foundation for Scotland’s commitment to co‑production and the creation of fairer, more inclusive public services.

Disability competence

The Plan sets a clear goal to increase disability competence across the Scottish Government—the skills, knowledge, and confidence to recognise and address impacts on disabled people and ensure equal freedom and opportunity. A disability‑competent government includes DPOs in the planning and design of policies, systems, and services, creating the conditions for full and meaningful participation in family, community, workplaces, and wider society. The Disabled People’s Cabinet Forum is a key mechanism to strengthen disability competence and leadership in government and to increase Ministerial‑level accountability.