Palliative care strategy: equality impact assessment
Equality impact assessment (EQIA) of Scotland’s Palliative Care Strategy setting out aims, evidence and engagement, and outlining how the strategy assesses potential impacts on protected groups.
Background
In order to develop the Palliative Care Strategy, we established a Strategy Steering Group, made up of a wide range of stakeholders from across various sectors, who are involved in the planning and delivery of palliative care. We also established various expert Working Groups covering a range of topics, including bereavement, children and young people and education and training.
We completed a literature review, which considered various pieces of research looking at users’ experiences of palliative care and care around death, and paid particular attention to research which looked at specific groups of people with protected characteristics.
We also commissioned Healthcare Improvement Scotland to undertake a Gathering Views exercise in January 2024 to support the ongoing development and implementation of the strategy by gathering views from people in Scotland with experiences of palliative care or caring for someone who has received palliative care. The Gathering Views engagement was conducted via 1-1 interviews and group discussions, including with older people and parents and children. This enabled us to focus on identified gaps from the literature review.
Further to this, we carried out Service Mapping Surveys of palliative care delivery across Scotland [1], followed by consultation and engagement meetings with service providers to discuss palliative care in the community, urgent palliative care and palliative care in acute hospitals.
All of this information helped us to understand more about what people have experienced and what they value in relation to palliative care, care around death, dying and bereavement support, as well as barriers in accessing palliative care.
A public consultation on the draft strategy was undertaken between October 2024 and January 2025, which included a question about equality and diversity. Respondents were asked if they thought the actions in this strategy can improve the experiences of people with different personal characteristics and circumstances. Just under half the respondents (48%) agreed that the strategy could address challenges faced by some groups in receiving the right palliative care and care around dying for them. A quarter of respondents selected the “unsure/don’t know” option.
The final strategy, which took account of the evidence gathered during the strategy development (summarised below), as well as the views expressed in the response to the public consultation, was published on 10 September 2025.