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.
Recommendations and Conclusion
Throughout their development, we continually assessed the impact of the strategy and delivery plan on protected characteristic groups and attempted to address any potentially negative impact on these groups. This was done by ensuring that the various Working Groups involved in developing the recommended actions considered relevant evidence collated from the literature review, gathering evidence exercise and the service mapping surveys, and that they gave particular thought to the potential impacts of their recommendations on people and groups with protected characteristics.
The Strategy itself makes specific reference to protected characteristics, particularly in relation to the collection of data for the purposes of improving the planning and delivery of services, and there is an acknowledgment of the differing needs of various age groups who require palliative care and consideration around how best to meet these needs.
Some of the actions in the delivery plan are specifically intended to have a positive impact on the experiences of children and young people who use palliative care services, as well as their families.
Other actions are intended to have a positive impact for the population of palliative care users as a whole, however we have built the ongoing assessment of equalities impact into our plans for the delivery of each of the actions to ensure that this continues to be a key part of our thinking as we move forward with delivery.
It is expected that some of the actions, by their nature, may positively impact some protected characteristic groups in particular. For example, more people who are older or have some long term conditions and disabilities may benefit from improved palliative care, whilst others (e.g. LGBTQI+) may benefit from addressing barriers to uptake. Actions taken to improve the knowledge and skills of the palliative care workforce, increasing their understanding of the differing needs of people of different races or religions, may also have a particularly positive impact on the experiences of those groups.
In conclusion, our assessment indicates that the new palliative care strategy, and its associated delivery plan, will not have a negative impact on any of the protected characteristics included in the Equality Act 2010, and that delivery of the actions may have a positive impact for certain groups.