Independent Advocacy Social Care Pilot Fund: equality impact assessment

The Scope of the EQIA

A range of engagement work and research was undertaken to support this workstream, and to ensure we had useful outputs to inform both policy development and this EQIA.

Firstly, this workstream was able to take advantage of the National Care Service’s programme-wide co-design work, as well as undertake some of its own, the result of which was 47 co-design engagements with a range of people with lived and living experience of receiving, delivering, or being interested in receiving, independent advocacy. This work focussed on accessing a range of experiences, including speaking to those who are sometimes referred to in policy-making as ‘seldom heard voices’. The outcome of this work was subsequently analysed inhouse.

Secondly, work was undertaken to map existing independent advocacy provision in Scotland as a complement to the above qualitative work.

Finally, desk-based research was undertaken to analyse existing literature in relation to the protected characteristics of sexual orientation, gender reassignment, disability, age, race, sex, religion or belief, and pregnancy or maternity linked to independent advocacy in both Scotland and England (to allow for a wider sweep of research to be used). Given there is very little focussed research on independent advocacy, this was also supplemented with analysis of literature in relation to social care and these characteristics, and then, where this was insufficient, healthcare literature was used.

All of the above data was then used to look at each of the above protected characteristics in turn alongside the Public Sector Equality Duties, to assess for discrimination. (The Public Sector Equality Duties are to: eliminate discrimination, harassment, victimisation, and any other conduct prohibited by the Equality Act 2010; advance equality of opportunity between people who share a relevant protected characteristic and those who do not; and foster good relations between people who share a relevant protected characteristic and those who do not.)

Subsequent to undertaking this initial analysis, we focused on a specific policy option in relation to increasing independent advocacy which had come out of the research and development work detailed above: to increase provision of the different types of independent advocacy available to people, so they had more options for accessing this support. We decided to trial this approach through a grant fund pilot, so that we could assess its potential effectiveness.

This non-targeted offering was analysed against the above characteristics and duties; the outcome of this is detailed below.