Social work - Practice Learning Support Grant: equality impact assessment

The scope of this EQIA

The development of this EQIA gave due regard to the three requirements of the Public Sector Equality Duty: to eliminate unlawful discrimination; to advance equality of opportunity between people who share a protected characteristic, and those who don’t; and to encourage or foster good relations between people who share a protected characteristic, and those who don't.

Protected characteristics that this policy must be assessed for are:

• age
• disability (physical and mental)
• gender reassignment
• pregnancy and maternity
• race
• religion or belief
• sex
• sexual orientation

As well as groups with protected characteristics, officials have also considered potential effects on students who are resident in rural and island communities, and from various socio-economic groups.

The EQIA was principally informed by:

• a review of the data profile of equalities categories in HESA data for social work students in Scottish universities
• findings from monitoring and evaluation of the Interim Travel Grant 2023–2024
• review of available reports on cross-UK and Scottish student financial wellbeing and equalities characteristics

Data currently available from HESA and SSSC do not enable us to identify the numbers and profile of students within the PLSG cohort from different demographics and protected groups. However, these have been reasonably inferred by applying the HESA-level percentages of students in different categories of characteristics to the PLSG cohort.

OCSWA will:

• update this EQIA when new verified data are available from HESA about students’ dependants and carer status
• consider the published results of the Student Finance and Wellbeing Study Scotland 2023–2024 (Scottish National Centre for Social Research)
• undertake a wider literature review as part of practice learning policy development, monitoring and evaluation

Grant recipients will be surveyed on their experience of using the system and how they perceive the effectiveness of the grant value.

Officials note ongoing feedback from social work students about challenging financial circumstances during their full-time placement, including:

• Report published by SASW^[6] supported the claim that financial hardship (and its associated negative affect on wellbeing) worsened for student social workers during their mandatory placements.
• A National Union of Students (NUS) report in 2023 highlighted the financial pressures felt across a range of student groups^[7].
• Advance HE's report, ‘Equality in higher education: statistical reports 2023’^[8] provided a comparison with the cross-UK higher education student body, and examined a number of points of intersectionality of protected groups.