Publication - FOI/EIR release

Information pertaining to the Equally Safe Scotland strategy: FOI review

Published: 7 February 2024
Directorate: Equality, Inclusion and Human Rights Directorate
Part of: Public sector
FOI reference: 202200303580
Date received: 1 June 2022
Date responded: 30 June 2022

Information request and response under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002.

Information requested

1. Up to date membership of the Equally Safe Joint Strategic Board.

2. Any public consultation papers, responses, and analysis of responses related to/informing the creation of the Equally Safe Scotland strategy in 2014. (By public, I mean consultation of the public, as opposed to published).

3. Could you please confirm whether the Equally Safe Scotland strategy was updated in 2016, 2018 or both, as different publications give conflicting information?

4. Any public consultation papers, responses and analysis of responses related to/informing the update of the Equally Safe Scotland strategy in 2016 and/or 2018. (By public, I mean consultation of the public, as opposed to published).

5. Any assessment framework or similar that was used to evaluate funding applications for the Equally Safe (Violence Against Women and Girls) Fund 2017–2021.

6. Any assessment framework or similar that was used to evaluate funding applications for the Delivering Equally Safe Funding 2021–2023.

7. Implementation Monitoring
a) Equally Safe Quality Standards and Performance Framework
i) Could you please confirm whether it is mandatory for Violence Against Women Partnersh ips to submit information to the Improvement Service under the Equally Safe Quality Standards and Performance Framework?
ii) Any/all national reports summarising data gathered under the Framework from when the Framework was first introduced to present date (excluding ‘Equally Safe Quality Standards and Performance Framework: Key Learning from 2020/21 Data Returns’)
iii) Any aggregated data specifically related to the performance of VAWPs under Quality Standard 3(8) (“High quality, targeted interventions are in place to engage with women and children affected by VAWG who may experience additional vulnerabilities and barriers as result of race, sexual orientation, age or disability. This includes LGBTI people, minority ethnic women and girls, disabled women and girls (including those with learning disabilities), refugees and asylum seekers, and women of different ages and stages of life.”)
b) Details of any framework, process or similar used to monitor the implementation and/or progress of projects which received funding under the Equally Safe (Violence Against Women and Girls) Fund 2017–2021 or the Delivering Equally Safe Funding 2021–2023.
c) The application form for the Equally Safe (Violence Against Women and Girls) Fund 2017–2021 required applicants to clarify how their project will work “intersectionally, i.e. with people with a combination of protected characteristics” (Section 6.8). The application form for the Delivering Equally Safe Funding 2021–2023 asked applicants “Please describe who will benefit from your work. If your work will support people from particular backgrounds (e.g. specific ethnic groups, disabled people, people who have a combination of intersecting protected characteristics, etc.) please include that information.” (Section 2.12). What action has been taken to monitor the implementation/progress of funded projects specifically in relation to those criteria?

Response

A copy of most of the information you requested in the form you asked for.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we are unable to provide some of the information you have requested because exemptions under section 38(1)(b) or section 12 of FOISA applies to that information. The reasons why the exemptions apply are explained in the Annex and, in regards to section 12, within answer 2.

1. The Equally Safe Joint Strategic Board is co-chaired by Ms McKelvie, Minister for Equalities and Older People and COSLA Community Wellbeing Spokesperson, previously Councillor Parry but there will be a new spokesperson going forward.

The members of the Equally Safe Joint Strategic Board as of January 2021 are as follows:
Dr Marsha Scott, Chief Executive at Scottish Women’s Aid
Sandra Brindley, Chief Executive at Rape Crisis Scotland
Moira Price, National Procurator Fiscal for Domestic Abuse at the Crown office and Procurator Fiscal Service
Samantha Faulds, Detective Chief Superintendent at Police Scotland
Anna Mitchell, UK Lead Safe and Together
Karyn McClusky, Chief Executive at Community Justice Scotland
Karen Allan, Chief Executive at Health and Social Care Alliance
Kelly McIntosh, representing Association of Directors of Education in Scotland
Mariam Ahmed, Chief Executive Officer, Amina Muslim Women’s Centre
Iona Colvin, Chief Social Work Advisor, The Scottish Government
Katie Kelly, Deputy Chief Executive of East Ayrshire Council
Catriona Kirkpatrick, Head of Development Engender
Eddie Docherty, Director for Nurses, Midwives and the Allied Health Professions, NHS Lanarkshire

2. While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the costs of locating, retrieving and providing the information requested for this particular question would exceed the upper cost limit of £600. The initial search to obtain the information requested for this FOI resulted in a number of documents great enough that the time taken to review them for the purposes of this FOI would have gone over the upper cost limit of £600. Under section 12 of FOISA, public authorities are not required to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying would exceed the upper cost limit, which is currently set at £600 by Regulations made under section 12.

You may, however, wish to consider reducing the scope of your request in order that the costs can be brought below £600. This may be best done by narrowing the scope of the questions to one specific topic matter or key issue you are interested in.

3. The Equally Safe Strategy was updated in 2016. In 2018, the Equally Safe Strategy was re published on the Scottish Government website.

4. A public consultation was launched for the development of the Equally Safe delivery plan in 2017.

The consultation, the consultation responses and analysis of the responses are available online. Consultation paper: Equally Safe: draft delivery plan consultation - gov.scot. Consultation published responses: Published responses for A Consultation on the draft Delivery Plan for Equally Safe: Scotland's strategy for preventing and eradicating violence against women and girls - Scottish Government - Citizen Space
Analysis of consultation responses: Introduction - Equally Safe draft delivery plan consultation 2017-2021: response analysis - gov.scot.

5. All applications for the Equally Safe (Violence against Women and Girls) Fund were processed by Impact Funding Partners, with support from the Scottish Government, who published the criteria and guidance on their website at the time applications were being made in 2017. They are no longer available on Impact Funding Partners website, as such I have enclosed copies of the documents. Please see documents (a), (b) and (c).

6. The Delivering Equally Safe fund application assessment and decision making process was managed by Inspiring Scotland with support of the Scottish Government. I have attached the information which was provided to organisations as part of the application process. I have also included the DES fund assessment and scoring guide, please see documents (d) and (e).

7. a) (i) In April 2018, the Scottish Government and COSLA co-published the Equally Safe Quality Standards and Performance Framework and set out their expectation that multi-agency VAW Partnerships and their partner organisations would use this framework on an annual basis to measure their progress and performance in implementing Equally Safe, and to help identify any areas where improvements may be required. However, there is no statutory duty for these Partnerships to do so.
ii) Individual reports are produced annually for every local authority area that submits an Equally Safe Quality Standards and Performance Framework data return to the Improvement Service. As the intended audience for these reports are local authority areas themselves to help support planning for the year ahead, these local reports are not published. National learning from the data returns has been produced since 2019 onwards, which have either been published as standalone documents or embedded in the Scottish Government’s Equally Safe Delivery Plan Annual Progress Reports. I have attached the Equally Safe Quality Standards and Performance Framework, Key Learning from 2017/18 (document (f)), 2018/19 (document (g)) and please find linked the Equally Safe Delivery Plan Year 3 Update Report in which the 2019/20 findings were included within.
iii) As you note within your question, one of the Quality Standards the multi-agency partnerships are asked to assess themselves against each year is: ““High quality, targeted interventions are in place to engage with women and children affected by VAWG who may experience additional vulnerabilities and barriers as result of race, sexual orientation, age or disability. This includes LGBTI people, minority ethnic women and girls, disabled women and girls (including those with learning disabilities), refugees and asylum seekers, and women of different ages and stages of life.”
As can be found within the attached documents within the answer to question 7a(iii), the % of local authority areas who report meeting or partly meeting this Quality Standard are:

2017/18 – 36% reported that they fully met the QS, 60% reported they partly met the QS.
2018/19 – 37% reported that they met the QS, 53% reported they partly met the QS
2020/21 – 27% reported that they met the QS, 64% reported they partly met the QS.

b) In regards to the Delivering Equally Safe Fund, all organisations funded through Delivering Equally Safe are required, through their grant agreement with The Scottish Government, to provide 6 monthly updates on the progress of their funded activity. Please see attached guidance notes on the progress reporting form (document h) and please see a link to the Delivering Equally Safe Reporting Template Form.

In regards to the Equally Safe (Violence Against Women and Girls) Fund 2017-2021, all organisations were required to provide 6 monthly updates on the progress of their funded activity. I have attached one of the six monthly progress reports that organisations were asked to fill in for reference (document i).

c) As noted within your question, the application forms for the Equally Safe (Violence Against Women and Girls) Fund 2017-2021 asked, in section 6.8, “Will your project work intersectionally, i.e with people who have a combination of protected characteristics?”. For organisations who noted yes to this question, the application form asked the organisations to provide detail of this work. As such, whilst there is no specific question within the six-monthly reports for section 6.8, we did expect organisations to provide an update of all the work they had noted within their application including for section 6.8 (if they had noted yes).

In regards to the Delivering Equally Safe Funding 2021-2023, the application asked applicants in section 2.12 to “ Please describe who will benefit from your work. If your work will support people from particular backgrounds please include that information”. Question 10 within the 6 monthly reporting progress reports asks organisations to “Please tell us who your funded activity is directly focused at engaging with”. This question allows funding managers to understand the progress in relation of section 2.12 as it requires organisations to outline who the work is engaging with and therefore, it will indicate whether they are supporting people from particular backgrounds.

ANNEX

REASONS FOR NOT PROVIDING INFORMATION
Exemptions under section 38(1)(b) of FOISA applies to all the information you have requested.

This exemption means the personal data which the disclosure of which would contravene data protection principles is redacted. Personal data includes all information that relates to an individual, and includes identifiers such as name, address, and date of birth.

This exemption is not subject to the ‘public interest test’, so we are not required to consider if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption.

About FOI

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