Independent Living Fund Scotland

Equality Duty Action Plan

Contents

1.    CONTENTS.. 1

2.    Introduction. 1

2.1     Background. 2

2.2     The General Equality Duty. 3

2.3     Board Members. 4

2.4     Senior Managers. 4

2.5     Equality and Diversity Staff 4

2.6     Communications Staff 4

2.7     Frontline Staff 4

2.8     Procurement 4

2.9     Line Managers. 4

3.    KEY ILF Scotland Documents. 5

3.1     ILF Scotland Policies. 6

3.2     2020-23 Strategic Corporate Plan. 6

3.3     2020-23 Business Plan. 6

4.    What we do – Customer Facing Actions (CFA) 5

5.    ILF Scotland HR Policies on Equality & Diversity. 11

5.1     Equal Opportunities Policy Statement 11

5.2     Diversity Policy Statement 11

5.3     Resources Available on Diversity & Equality. 11

6.    Forward Planning. 12

6.1     Annex A.. 13

7.    EQUALITY & DIVERSITY PLAN – ACTION PLAN (AP) 15

1.              Introduction

The Independent Living Fund Scotland (ILF Scotland) believes that no-one should be denied opportunities because of their race or ethnicity, a disability, their gender, or sexual orientation, their marital or civil partnership status, their age or religion, or due to any of the protected characteristics detailed in the Equality Act.

ILF Scotland will treat recipients, applicants and ILF Scotland staff equally and fairly. For staff, this commitment also extends to maternity status, working pattern, employment status, caring responsibility, and trade union membership.

ILF Scotland must comply with the Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties) (Scotland) Regulations 2012 and the specific duties designed to help Scottish public authorities meet the general duty. Regulation 4 of the specific equality duties requires that we base our Equality Outcomes on evidence, and involvement of equality groups. 

The Public Sector Equality Duty regulates performance against equalities duties. From April 2020, ILF Scotland is required to report on the areas outlined below, every two years, apart from the Statement on Equal Pay, which is every four years. We also have a duty to publish diversity information about our board members. This report meets our general and specific duties under the Equality Act 2010 and outlines:

• Mainstreaming the Equality Duty in ILF Scotland 
• Report on Progress
• Board Diversity Duty
• Employee Information
• Gender Pay Gap Information
• Statement on Equal Pay (covering sex only)

1.1          Background

The public sector equality duty came into force on 05 April 2011. The purpose of the duty is to ensure that public authorities consider how they positively contribute to a more equal society. It requires authorities to consider equality in all their functions, including decision-making, design, and delivery of services.

From 01 October 2012, the scope of the Act was extended to ban age discrimination, though this does not presently cover people under the age of 18.

The aim of the Equality Duty Action Plan is to demonstrate ILF Scotland’s commitment to the Scottish Government’s equalities agenda, mitigate the risk that equalities activities are not prioritised and align the activities with budgets and resources to cover short and medium-term objectives.

1.2          The General Equality Duty

Under the Equality Act 2010, public authorities are required to have due regard to the need to:

1. Eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation and other prohibited conduct.
2. Advance equality of opportunity between people who share a relevant protected characteristic and those who do not.
3. Foster good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not.

This duty is often referred to as “the three needs.” To comply with the duty, a public authority must have due regard to all three of these needs.

The Act explains that to meet the second need (advancing equality of opportunity), a public authority must consider the need to:

• Remove or minimise disadvantage suffered by people with certain protected characteristics, where these are different from the needs of other people.
• Encourage people with certain protected characteristics to participate in public life or in other activities where their participation is disproportionately low.

The Act also sets out that:

• Meeting different needs includes (among other things) taking steps to take account of disabled people’s disabilities.
• Fostering good relations means tackling prejudice and promoting understanding between people from different groups.
• Meeting the general equality duty may involve treating some people more favourably than others.

Who should be aware of the General Duty in ILF Scotland?

1.3          Board Members

Set strategic direction, review performance, and ensure good governance of the organisation. The Depute Director, Scottish Government, Health & Social Care, appraises the Chair of the Board against a Diversity Objective.

1.4          Senior Managers

Oversee the design, delivery, quality, and effectiveness of the organisation’s functions.

1.5          Equality and Diversity Staff

Specific role in raising awareness and building capacity about the general duty. The Equality Lead in ILF Scotland is the Chief Executive Officer.

1.6          Communications Staff

Help ensure relevant equality information is available and accessible.

1.7          Frontline Staff

Need to be aware of how they can help to meet the needs of people with special characteristics.

1.8          Procurement

Need to be aware of how to build equality considerations into the organisation’s supply chain. In ILF Scotland, anyone tendering a contract should be aware of the Equalities Obligation and what we expect of organisations that we contract with.

1.9          Line Managers

  Need to consider and be aware of how they apply Equality Duty on a day-to-day basis 

  with reference to organisational employment policy and practice.

2.              Key ILF Scotland Documents

The primary function of ILF Scotland is to operate a discretionary fund providing financial awards to over 4,000 disabled people in Scotland and Northern Ireland to help them live independently. ILF Scotland adheres to a suite of key policy documents to support our recipients, applicants, and staff. The policy suite is updated on an ongoing basis to support the Scottish Government’s strategic priorities.

The key references are:

• www.ilf.scot
• ILF Scotland Policies
• 2020-23 Strategic Plan
• 2020-23 Business Plan

2.1          ILF Scotland Policies

ILF Scotland recognises the need to consider whether and how the outcome and delivery of any proposed new or amended policy might impact on people, specifically, what relevance the policy might have to people with protected characteristics.

The policy development lead will carry out a ‘screening exercise’ to help determine if any proposed or amended policy will directly or indirectly affect people. They should then complete either an Equality Impact Assessment (EQIA) or the ‘No EQIA required declaration.’

The policy lead must carry out the EQIA early, and as an embedded part of the policy development process, so that the assessment can shape, inform, and influence the policy proposals, and they should continue to revisit this assessment throughout the lifecycle of the policy.

2.2          2022-24 Strategic Corporate Plan

The vision set out in the Corporate Plan identifies the integral part played by ILF Scotland in supporting independent living for disabled people across Scotland and Northern Ireland, and how ILF Scotland can support individuals through its funding role.

2.3          2023-24 Business Plan

ILF Scotland will improve its evidence base by gathering information from recipients, applicants, and staff through the various use of equality monitoring forms, and where applicable, will use surveys, to strengthen its understanding of the needs and requirements of the disabled people the organisation supports.

This improved data will be reflected in enhanced information displayed in the Annual Corporate Report and online. Stronger management information will enable ILF Scotland to consider how it can better meet the general equality duty, its specific duty under the Act, and improve its service delivery.

3.              What we do – Customer Facing Actions (CFA)

Ref	Action	General Equality Duty	Owner	Review
CFA01	Engage opportunities to encourage diversity of our Board membership and create dialogue with under-represented groups (specifically disabled people).	Advance Equality of Opportunity	Chair of the Board	Ongoing through specific engagement opportunities
CFA02	Ensure that all our staff follow SSSC’s Code of Conduct. The Code is part of our Induction Pack for all staff. Refresher and updates are delivered as required.	Eliminate DiscriminationAdvance Equality of OpportunityFoster Good Relations	Director of Self-Directed Support	Completed and ongoing, August 2024 refresher with staff is planned due to SSSC updates.
CFA03	Continue to amend our website to create clear visual communication, making appropriate use of audio/video and social media platforms, to increase accessibility and reduce barriers for disabled people. Follow good practice guidance on design for our website and all publications and provide documents in alternative languages and formats on request.	Eliminate DiscriminationFoster Good Relations	Director of Policy	New improved website with greater emphasis on accessibility, live June 22. Achieved new UK Government Standards on Accessibility. Diversified and extended use of social media platforms. Improvements made to Fund literature in the Transition Fund application process. Accessibility internal working group established to review key material.         Focus on making all key public documents accessible.
CFA04	EQIA exercise to be carried out and EQIA published for all new and revised external policies, the framework of this is  determined by Scottish Government Ministers.   EQIAs to be completed for other key business decisions.	To comply with Equality Legislation and good practice. Eliminate DiscriminationFoster Good Relations	Director of Policy           All Heads of Departments	Completed and ongoing.             EQIA Training for Management Team – May 2022.   Refresher training will take place during 2024 to 2026.

CFA Ref	Action	General Equality Duty	Owner	Review Update
CFA05	Improvements to application forms and guidance, all designed to be clear and accessible. Including access to Gaelic Language forms.	Advance Equality of OpportunityFoster Good Relations	Director of Policy	In progress and ongoing – Gaelic Language forms not yet developed.
CFA06	All roadshows and events undertaken in accessible venues, with as wide a geographic spread as possible, bi-lingual advertising in Gaelic-speaking communities.	Advance Equality of OpportunityFoster Good Relations	Director of Policy	Ensured all engagement events for the Independent Living Fund re-opening were held in accessible venues and that all related communication was produced in Plain Language and Easy Read. No events were held in Gaelic Language speaking localities.
CFA07	‘Equality check’ carried out on Board papers and all publications/key documents to ensure written communication is gender neutral.	Eliminate Discrimination	All Heads of Department	Ongoing
CFA08	Equality clauses added to all contracts as part of tendering/procurement process and submissions measured against equality criteria.	Advance Equality of OpportunityEliminate Discrimination	Head of Finance	Ongoing
CFA09	Denholm House is an accessible building with an induction loop. ILF Scotland promotes such provision through its service level agreement with the Scottish Government.	Foster Good Relations	Chief Operating Officer
CFA10	Through our Corporate Parenting Plan, we will further develop our communications strategy to target care experienced young people and those that support them to ensure they are aware of ILF Scotland Transition and Re-opened Funds. We will ensure ILF Scotland staff and Board Members are aware of the principles of Corporate Parenting through training courses and induction programmes.	Advance Equality of Opportunity	Director of Policy	Communications Strategy updated.   Training delivery September / October 2024
CFA11	Facilitate meetings of the Co-production Working Group every two months in 2024 to 2025, with the first meeting to be scheduled for June 2024. Report on learning from the first two months of receiving applications to the re-opened fund and work together with the group and others as required to further develop policies around the key issues raised by disabled people and others at the re-opening engagement events. Arrange further co-production opportunities with our recipients and others as part of our strategic planning consultations in the latter part of 2024 to 2025.	Advance Equality of OpportunityFoster Good Relations	CEO       Director of Policy         SMT	Ongoing       Ongoing         November 2024

WHAT WE DO TO PROMOTE EQUALITY – ACTIONS WITH STAFF (SA)

SA Ref	Action	General Equality Duty	Owner	Review
SA01	Offer employment opportunities for volunteer/student placements for young people with a disability that places them at a significant disadvantage in the job market.	Advance equality of opportunity	CEO	Student placements opportunities offered annually.
SA02	Continue induction training for Board Directors and staff on Diversity and Equality.	Eliminate discrimination	Head of Business Services	Ongoing - DET Training for all staff and Board Directors during induction.

SA03

Gaelic Language Plan, with responsibility held at Senior Management level, helping to raise awareness and culture of relevance to ILF Scotland’s staff and recipients.

Advance equality of opportunityFoster good relations

Director of Policy

Awareness training delivered across the organisation – Feb 2022. On hold since then due to other completing priorities and no requirement currently for legislative compliance. Will pick up in next strategic plan.

SA Ref	Action	General Equality Duty	Owner	Review
SA04	Information on Equality & Diversity is included in the Staff Handbook/ HR Policies and forms part of the Induction for new staff.	Advance equality of opportunity Eliminate discrimination Foster good relations	Head of Business Services	Complete and on-going for new staff. Refresher sessions for current staff.
SA05	ILF Scotland continues to promote best practice in making sure the office space is suitable for people with differing needs, for instance with an induction loop and disabled access to the building.	Foster good relations Eliminate discrimination	Head of Business Services	MOTO and Shared Service Agreement with the Scottish Government.
SA06	Adhere to ILF Scotland HR policies on equality and diversity in the workplace, including work-life balance, development, promotion, work opportunities and recruitment.	Advance equality of opportunity	Head of Business Services	Completed for all staff and on-going refreshers.
SA07	Regular Conversations take place between staff and line managers and include specific reference to wellbeing to allow any concerns to be acted on.	Foster good relations Eliminate discrimination	Head of Business Services	Ongoing regularly through 1-2-1s and training.
SA08	Continue to increase awareness of mental health issues as an equality issue.	Advance equality of opportunity Eliminate discrimination Foster good relations	Head of Business Services	4 x Mental Health First Aiders. Mental Health & Personal Resilience training offered regularly to all staff and Board Directors.

SA Ref	Action	General Equality	Duty	Update
SA09	ILF Scotland adheres to the SG (Scottish Government) Fairness at Work policy, which covers equality and diversity.	Foster good relations Eliminate discrimination	Head of Business Services	Work with recognised union - PCS to ensure ILF Scotland works to the Fairness at Work principles.
SA10	Raise awareness of neurodiversity and provide staff training to cover this area specifically as part of our equality and diversity training. Provide more detailed training to front line staff working in both Funds so that they can provide better informed customer service to those applications and recipients who are neurodivergent.	Advance equality of opportunity	Head of Business Services	Raise awareness workshops between 2024-26

4.              ILF Scotland HR Policies on Equality & Diversity

ILF Scotland has designed its induction procedures to ensure diversity issues are included and staff are aware of a range of advice, guidance and support provided by ILF Scotland HR team.

4.1          Equal Opportunities Policy Statement

ILF Scotland will treat all staff equally irrespective of their sex, marital/civil partnership status, maternity status, age, race, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, disability, religion, or belief, working pattern, employment status, gender identity, caring responsibility, or trade union membership.

4.2          Diversity Policy Statement

ILF Scotland is committed to increasing the diversity of staff within the organisation. We will develop all our staff, ignoring all irrelevant differences, in their management and development. Furthermore, we will positively value the different perspectives and skills of all staff and make full use of these in our work.

4.3          Resources Available on Diversity & Equality

• Diversity Training.
• Flexi policy and working patterns (flexible working).
• Equality staff networks.
• Inclusive communication.
• How staff can access the Employee Assistance Programme to support wellbeing.

5.              Forward Planning

Active consideration of equality will help ILF Scotland to identify ways in which to improve evidence gathering and engagement, to help improve the quality of services it provides, making them more responsive to customer and staff needs, leading to better outcomes.

Senior Managers and Board Directors have a vital role to play in giving a clear and consistent message about the importance of promoting equality and diversity. Through visible leadership, the senior management team will ensure that it reflects equality in performance reporting and that staff are clear ILF Scotland adopts a zero-tolerance approach to discriminatory behaviour and builds the capacity of all staff to consider and promote the equality duties.

5.1          Annex A

Protected Characteristics

• Protected Characteristics
  • Age
  • Disability
  • Gender reassignment
  • Marriage and civil partnership
  • Pregnancy and maternity
  • Race
  • Religion and belief
  • Sex
  • Sexual orientation

6.              Equality & Diversity Plan - Action Plan (AP)

AP Ref	Action	General Equality Duty			Owner		Update	Review
AP01	Staff satisfaction survey – use to provide data on bullying and harassment, wellbeing, and opportunities. Compare data in-year. Consider adding question to survey to seek staff ideas on improving diversity.	Advance equality of opportunityEliminate discriminationFoster good relations			Head of Business Services		Ongoing TRICKLE ‘mood senses’ monthly. Working group formed annually to consider survey and improve offering	2024-24 Staff Survey completed and ongoing mood-senses

AP Ref	Action	General Equality Duty	Owner	Update	Review
AP02	The TF online application process reduces access barriers to recipients as they do not need to phone or write to us to access information and do not need to complete a written application form.	Foster good relations	Director of Policy	Online application process improvements implemented 20/21.	Keep opportunities for further improvements under review. Ongoing
AP03	Equality & Diversity given high profile in induction training for Board Directors.	Advance equality of opportunity Foster good relations	Head of Business Services	New Board Directors 2023 onwards	New Board Directors attended Disability Equality Training. Board Directors attend Neurodiversity workshop sessions 2024-26 .

AP Ref	Action	General Equality Duty	Owner	Update	Review
AP04	Increase awareness of cultural importance of Gaelic and promote learning by providing training and BnG presentation to Board.	Foster good relations	Director of Policy / Head of Business Services	Progress started on a voluntary basis at present well in advance of requirement to produce Plan in full.	On hold
AP05	Ensure all venues for roadshows are accessible and bi-lingual advertising in Gaelic-speaking areas.	Eliminate discriminationFoster good relations	Director of Policy	No public events held in Gaelic-speaking areas.
AP06	Actions to promote increased awareness of Mental Health in the Workplace	Advance equality of opportunity Eliminate discrimination Foster good relations	Head of Business Services	Training ‘Supporting each other in a Crisis' -April 2020. Personal Resilience - March 2021. Returning to Workplace - May 2022. 4 x Mental Health First Aiders trained and in post.	Continue Mental Health & Resilience workshops and raising awareness annually.

Foreword

We are pleased to introduce our third Mainstreaming and Equality Outcomes Report. This document highlights the progress we have made in delivering our 2022 to 2024 equality outcomes. It also sets out our equality outcomes for 2024 to 2026 and the actions we will take to achieve them.

We aim to review our progress and planning relating to equality regularly and, as a minimum, to conduct a formal appraisal of our activities including our progress in achieving our mainstreaming equality objectives, on an annual basis.

We introduce this report at a time of positive change, with considerable work ongoing to support the phased re-opening of the Independent Living Fund in Scotland to new applicants.

This will provide an initial £9 million in the financial year 2024 to 2025, enabling up to 1,000 additional disabled people with the most complex needs to access the support they need to live independent lives.

To prepare for the re-opening for new applications in April 2024, ILF Scotland staff are collaborating with disabled people, their representative organisations, the Scottish Government and other key stakeholders on the co-production of the re-opened fund.

Through this important work, we wish to continue to operate high quality and efficient services to reach more recipients and overall to better enable independent living for disabled people and those with long-term health conditions.

Our Strategic Plan 2020 to 2023 ‘Hope & Ambition’ (extended until 2025), its associated Delivery Plan, our suite of ILF Scotland Policies and output from Equality Committee meetings, demonstrate our overall commitment to promoting equality.

However, it is our day-to-day activities that demonstrate our commitment to mainstreaming equality on a continual basis. Equality is at the heart of what we do as an organisation and runs through all our activities, thoughts, behaviours and plans.

Our Board and staff group are diverse with regards to their own lived experience and they are also well-informed about equality, diversity and inclusion on a broader basis. We always strive to further improve our practice and therefore we continue to build upon the work carried out to date. We continue to look for ways we can listen to, learn from and provide better informed services relating to equality, diversity and inclusion to our recipients, our staff and our other key stakeholders. Where there is challenge in delivery, we will seek to turn this into an opportunity to improve what we do.

The organisation does not operate in isolation and continues to seek out best practice, feedback, reporting tools, partnership working and latest ideas.

As well as addressing inequality in relation to protected characteristics, we are also considerate of broader definitions of diversity that focus on additional areas, such as neurodiversity, cognitive diversity, social mobility and socio-economic diversity. The need to consider the intersectionality and the impact of how a combination or more than one protected characteristic can perpetuate different forms of discrimination or inclusion challenges, is also paramount.

Our plans are informed by a consideration of the existing context, as well as anticipated future impacts, such as the increase in the use of AI technologies and increased regulatory interest in identifying meaningful diversity metrics. We also look to incorporate best practice and guidance such as the UK Government’s Disability Action Plan and Inclusive Britain action plan and policy commitments (DLUHC and Race Disparity Unit, 2022)

Anne-Marie Monaghan, ILF Scotland Board Chair        

Peter Scott, OBE, ILF Scotland CEO

Introduction

About Us

• ILF Scotland is a Non-Departmental Public Body (NDPB), governed by a Board of Directors, appointed by and accountable to Scottish Ministers. See a brief history and context of ILF Scotland.

• ILF Scotland operates as a discretionary fund providing financial awards to approximately 2,243 disabled people in Scotland and Northern Ireland to help them live independently. This includes the newly re-opened Independent Living Fund, which provides a regular 4-weekly award to enable individuals to pay for support so that they can live with choice, control and dignity in their homes and within their local communities.

• In addition, the ILF Scotland Transition Fund provides one-off grant funding for young disabled people aged 16 to 25 years to help them to increase their independence and participate in their communities.

ILF Scotland employs:

• 81 people (3 on temporary contracts): a team of 3 in Northern Ireland and 78 across Scotland, including 51 support staff in the Livingston office and 30 home-based assessors. We actively recruit colleagues who are disabled and who have long-term health conditions. In addition, we have 8 Board members, 4 of whom identify as disabled.

Legal Framework

The Equality Act 2010 sets out the ‘general equality duty’ for all public authorities to have due regard to the need to:

• Eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation and other prohibited conduct.

• Advance equality of opportunity between people who share a relevant protected characteristic and those who do not, particularly by removing or minimising disadvantage; meeting the needs of particular groups that are different from the needs of others; and encouraging participation in public life.

• Foster good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not.

The Equality Act 2010 lists nine protected characteristics:

• Age
• Disability
• Gender Reassignment
• Marriage and Civil Partnership
• Pregnancy and Maternity
• Race
• Religion or Belief
• Sex
• Sexual Orientation

and defines direct and indirect discrimination as:

“Where someone is treated less favourably according to a protected characteristic or could be disadvantaged compared to someone who does not share that protected characteristic.”

All people are entitled to equal treatment and the way in which people are treated shapes their lives and lived experiences. It is important that we recognise and understand how unequal treatment under each characteristic impacts on people and particularly those who are living with more than one or multiple protected characteristics.

ILF Scotland must comply with the Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties) (Scotland) Regulations 2012 and the specific duties designed to help Scottish public authorities meet the general duty.

Regulation 4 of the specific equality duties requires that we base our Equality Outcomes on evidence and involvement of equality groups.

The The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) regulate performance against public sector equality duties. From April 2020, ILF Scotland is required to report on the areas outlined below, every two years, apart from the Statement on Equal Pay, which is every four years. We also have a duty to publish diversity information about our board members. This report meets our general and specific duties under the Equality Act 2010 and outlines:

• Mainstreaming the Equality Duty in ILF Scotland
• Report on Progress
• Board Diversity Duty
• Employee Information
• Gender Pay Gap Information
• Statement on Equal Pay (covering sex only)

Mainstreaming the Equality Duty in ILF Scotland

Introduction

As a fair work organisation working with disabled people, we regularly review our working practices to ensure that equality, diversity and inclusion are at the centre of our decision-making. We also seek to adopt recommended practices for mainstreaming as outlined in the Equality Human Rights Commission - Mainstreaming the Public Sector Equality Duty - A guide for public authorities in Scotland.

Mainstreaming equality and diversity is a long-term, strategic approach to ensure that equality, diversity and inclusion is truly integrated and sits at the heart of organisational culture and strategic and operational delivery.

It takes time and resources to develop this properly and it needs the commitment, encouragement and support of our Board and our Senior Management Team (SMT) to make sure that every member of our staff understands, accepts and embraces equality across every part of our organisation and in the services we deliver to our recipients. We believe that mainstreaming equality has many benefits including helping us to:

• put equality at the heart of everything we do
• embrace diversity across our organisation and attract and retain a motivated workforce, rich in talent, skills and experiences
• continually improve our service delivery and make sure our services meet the diverse needs of our recipients
• help us to be more socially inclusive and engage better with those most excluded in society
• improve our performance
• help us to deliver our Strategic Plan ‘Hope & Ambition’ and our associated Delivery Plan

We strongly embrace the principles of equality and are proud of the journey we have taken so far.

We became a Non-Departmental Public Body (NDPB) in 2018 and since then there have been changes to the wider equality context in which we work. These include legislative changes, the impact of major events and societal changes bringing certain inequalities into the foreground.

Key examples to note include:

Legislation Milestones:

• The Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act 2018 encourages Public Bodies to achieve at least 50% representation of women on their Boards.
• Civil Partnership (Scotland) Act 2020 enables people of different sexes to be in civil partnerships, a right that was previously only available for same sex couples (and had been introduced before same sex marriage was an option for same sex couples).
• Ongoing debate and legal action to clarify the definition of sex in law and attempts to reform the Gender Recognition Act in Scotland in 2023 have increased awareness of the experiences of transgender people.
• The Scottish Government has now committed to introducing a new human rights Bill for Scotland. This will incorporate United Nations (UN) human rights treaties of:
  • International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR)
  • Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW)
  • International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD)
  • Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).

The new Bill will also include the right to a healthy environment, as well as rights for older people and LGBTQI+, which includes lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (or questioning), and intersex people.

Key Events and Societal Changes

• The UK’s departure from the European Union in January 2020 and the current Scottish Government’s pledge to become independent and apply to rejoin the EU has meant that the context we operate in is open to significant change.
• The COVID-19 pandemic drew further attention to societal inequalities with women, disabled people, and ethnic minority groups disproportionately impacted by the effects of the virus and of lockdown measures. The pandemic has also changed the way we work and live, with more homeworking and reliance on digital technologies.
• Events such as George Floyd’s murder; the exposure of sexual harassment cases; and high-profile murder cases demonstrating violence against women, together with the resulting impact of the #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter movements, have all brought societal and workplace inequality into the foreground.
• Population growth in Scotland has been driven by international migration and migration from elsewhere in the UK together with changes in birth and death rates.
• The cost-of-living crisis is widening inequality and disproportionately affecting those who are most vulnerable in society.

All of the above has informed a shift in how we think about inequality and how we look to achieve inclusion in how we operate.

Our Recipients

The recipients of our funds are disabled people.

Independent Living Fund

Transition Fund

Our funding helps our recipients to access the same opportunities as others and achieve their personal independent living outcomes. We continuously review our strategies, plans, policies and practice to provide the best service we can.

Here you can find out more about our work from some of our recipients:

Independent Living Fund Case Studies

Transition Fund Case Studies

We regularly engage with our recipients. Here are some of the highlights of what we do:

1. As part of ILF Scotland’s ethos and aim to work in co-production with our recipients, we have established a Scotland Advisory Group.

The purpose of this group is to support the improvement and development of ILF Scotland, for recipients living in Scotland, by advising on all matters relating to the operation of the fund, including:

• experiences of using the existing fund
• experiences of communicating and interacting with ILF Scotland
• insight and advice into potential policy developments relating to the existing fund
• content and accessibility of ILF Scotland publications
• any other relevant matters

The Advisory Group reports to the ILF Scotland SMT, who in turn report learning and outcomes from the group to the Board and the Scottish Government, as required.

The minutes from the Scotland Advisory Group meetings are available on our website.

We also operate a Northern Ireland Stakeholder Group which operates on the same basis. The minutes of the Northern Ireland Stakeholder Group meetings are also available on our website.

2. As part of the re-opening of the Independent Living Fund, we held a series of co-production in person and online engagement events across Scotland to seek the views of disabled people, their carers and representatives and other key stakeholders.

Our Staff

We are a close team and we regularly listen to what staff have to say both informally and using regular survey tools.

On our website there are two case studies from members of our staff to hear from them directly.

Equality Assessment

We carry out Equality Impact Assessments (EQIAs) when we develop our external policies and publish these on our website. We continue to work to extend EQIAs across all our service delivery areas, as well as internal polices, plans and projects too.

For example, when developing our retirement policy, we ensured that an EQIA was conducted using our impact assessment tool, linking directly with our screening assessment plan. We were therefore able to consider the potential impact of this policy whilst screening for relevance and proportionality.

We believe in the many advantages of conducting EQIAs, in addition to adhering with our statutory duty to do so, including:

• enshrining the rights of disabled people to being treated with dignity and respect and being able to exercise choice and control in living their lives
• systematically conducting Equality Impact Assessments early in the planning process ensures that we identify any barriers that we need to avoid or mitigate as part of our decision making
• going through the EQIA process makes sure that we think about how the consequences of our plans and decisions might affect people with protected characteristics, other than disability, ensuring that different groups are included
• ensuring that we gather relevant information to demonstrate that our decisions are based on evidence, which is important in the event of challenge

We have raised awareness and provided training across the organisation of our impact assessment tool and screening assessment plan, taking staff through relevant worked examples of EQIAs on live work-related topics. We will repeat this training in 2024 to 2025 along with further examples to embed this area further in future, which will enable us to apply good equality practice across the organisation.

Our Equality Impact Assessments can be accessed on our website.

Our Partners

Key partners in our approach to equality include the Scottish Government and the Non-Departmental Public Body Human Resources network and forum where core Scottish Government and other Public Bodies share best practice on equality and diversity policy and practice.

In addition, we have developed ongoing positive working relationships with ARC Scotland, Who Cares? Scotland, a range of Person-Centred Planners and other partners via our continued engagement at events and meetings. This ensures that we keep equality at the heart of any decisions we make regarding the services we provide to young disabled people through our Transition Fund. We also signpost disabled people to other sources of support, such as Scottish Welfare Fund, other charities, benefits agencies / advisory organisations as appropriate.

We value the important input of our Advisory and Stakeholder group members in Scotland and Northern Ireland for the input and feedback they provide on equality when we work with them to develop the Charter for Involvement and through co-production on our strategies and policies. The Charter fits with human rights legislation, specifically the United Nations Convention of the Rights of Disabled Persons. Implementing the Charter actions, co-produced by the Advisory and Stakeholder Groups, helps ensure that we listen to our disabled recipients and their representatives so that they remain at the heart of our decision making.

We continue to embrace ways to work in partnership to improve our services and approach.

Report on Progress on Equality Outcomes for 2022 to 2024

We set ourselves ambitious equality outcomes and these will be considered in the next section of this report.

Some of our Key Equality Achievements:

• The Equality Committee, chaired by our CEO, is attended by a good representation of members of staff from across the organisation, with additional support and guidance from one of our Board members. The work of this committee is instrumental in driving our performance in achieving our equality outcomes.

• Integrated suggestions and ideas from the Minority Ethnic Recruitment Toolkit to improve the diversity of our workforce. For instance, we have worked on our website to make this a more welcoming experience and have advertised on the radio to enhance the reach of our advertising.

• Reviewed and integrated recommendations from the Scottish Government Self-directed Support Improvement Plan 2023 to 2027.

• Worked with the Scottish Advisory Group to understand and integrate recommendations set out in the Scottish Government British Sign Language National Plan 2023 to 2029.

• In addition, we raised awareness with our staff and recipients of the ‘Now Hear Me’ campaign, aimed at helping people to understand the needs of individuals who may have difficulties as a result of impaired or no speech and who use Augmentative and Alternative communication (AAC).

• Produced a Corporate Parenting Plan (2021 to 2024) which we continue to review and look for ways to improve.

• In December 2022, we were named as one of the Top 10 Family Friendly Employers in the UK (for the fourth time).

• In June 2023, we achieved our sixth year as a Top 30 Employer with Working Families.

• Winning the ‘Aligning Local Services Category’ and a finalist for the ‘Excellence in Governance and Risk Management’ category of the Public Finance Awards 2023.

Progress in Relation to Objectives set for 2022 to 2024

Our Equality Objectives were integrated into our business plan as Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timebound (SMART).

Objective: Equality Impact Assessment is consistently applied across the organisation

We made progress in further embedding the use of Equality Impact Assessments in our business practices. EQIAs are used in all policy changes across both the Independent Living Fund and the Transition Fund as standard practice and we have completed EQIAs for the re-opened policy changes as required. We have expanded EQIA completion across other areas of the business, but we still have more work to do to ensure consistency of practice across all of the organisation. We have developed an EQIA prompt in our project planning tool to assist with EQIA awareness.

We will focus on developing further training and awareness for all ILF Scotland staff during 2024 to 2026.

Objective: The Transition Fund has an appropriate reach across all eligible disabled young people in Scotland.

We carried out targeted work in key geographical areas of recognised deprivation and underrepresentation, working with corporate partners within these areas, which helped to increase the uptake in applications from groups that have been traditionally more difficult to engage with. This work also included the deaf community and care-experienced people as outlined in our Corporate Parenting Plan.

The Transition Fund has grown by 40% in 2022 to 2023 compared with the number of applications received in 2021 to 2022 and by 26% in 2023 to 2024 compared to 2022 to 2023. The drop in numbers is due to no repeat applications being allowed in the last quarter of 2023 to 2024. The new policy now limits applications to one per person, rather than repeat applications. While this does reduce accessibility for repeat applications, it is intended to increase the reach of the Transition Fund across a larger number of individual applicants.

Given the continued increasing demand for the Transition Fund, we will focus our engagement work this year on targeting those areas in the community that are most difficult to reach, reaching out to partners already operating and engaging with young people who might benefit most from the fund.

Objective: ILF Scotland’s activities are informed by a proactive approach to mainstreaming equality, based on a programme of continuous improvement and co-, production, internally and externally.

One example of our approach has been establishing the Co-Production Working Group to prepare for the re-opening of the Independent Living Fund (ILF), announced by the First Minister in September 2023 as part of Scotland’s Programme for Government. This group includes disabled people, carers, disabled people's organisations (DPOs) and representatives of ILF Scotland, the Scottish Government and health and social care statutory partners. Regular meetings of this group, combined with external engagement events, ensured that we proactively took on board the views of disabled people and their representatives in developing the policy framework for the re-opened ILF for Ministerial approval. Members of this group commented that the nature of the engagement work we undertook for the re-opening of the fund was reflective of a true co-production process and that it should be regarded as an example of good practice. We will continue to work with this group to engage further with disabled people to make additional improvements to accessing ILF during 2024 and 2025.

Our Equality and Diversity Committee has informed our annual staff survey and our recruitment and succession plans, with work continuing to ensure our programmes of learning and development offers equal opportunity.

Objective: Our services are targeted and appropriately tailored to our customers with one or more protected characteristics, taking account of those from a disadvantaged socio-economic background.

For the Transition Fund, we targeted via local media, paid social media and other forms of marketing, those geographical local authority areas that were under-represented in terms of applications to the fund. This ensured that disabled young people in those areas were given an equal opportunity to apply.

To maximise income, our assessors provide basic welfare benefit checks and refer to specialist welfare benefit and debt advice support where required. They also act in an advocacy role at times and often refer to independent advocacy services and to a range of other disability support organisations.

We have improved our ongoing service delivery in response to feedback from the COVID-19 recipient feedback survey. We developed an action plan following the analysis of the recipient feedback survey responses and implemented this in full.

Objective: We provide comprehensive monitoring and reporting on protected characteristics in line with good practice guidance.

We have not pursued this objective as we are awaiting the revised guidance from the Scottish Government. We will address this at an appropriate time in the future.

Objective: Our Communications Strategy appropriately reaches those people with protected characteristics and commits to ensuring improved access across our services and information.

This has been completed.

Our Communications and Engagement Strategy commits to reaching people with protected characteristics, ensuring improved information and access to our services.

For new applications, we have a communications and engagement strategy that works with people from ethnic minority groups to ensure representative applications.

For the Transition Fund specifically, we have used local media, paid social media and other forms of targeted marketing to reach geographical areas with the lowest uptake and areas of deprivation.

Members of the Ambassadors Group have helped us at targeted events and engagement sessions to help those with protected characteristics apply to the Transition Fund.

We actively target disabled young people from the most deprived backgrounds by targeting in person engagement towards schools and groups within the areas of the highest deprivation.

While not yet a protected characteristic, we also target young people whose experience of the care system has had a lasting, disabling effect on their ability to be able to make their way in the adult world. We do this by actively engaging with those organisations that work with these young people such as fostering and adoption agencies, local authority Throughcare and Aftercare Teams and support organisations such as Who Cares? Scotland.

In addition, during Care Experienced Week 2023, we worked with a TF recipient who is care experienced to showcase and promote how the TF can support care experienced young people. This recipient wrote a blog called ‘Who Cares? Scotland’s youngest trustee Eireann on Care Experienced Week 2023 and shared her story on social media.

Objective: We work with, learn from and benchmark with similar public authorities to help us to promote equality in a wider context.

We made initial contact in 2023 to 2024 with Equality Leads across the Scottish Government and other Public Sector organisations. We would have liked to have made greater progress but were constrained by the volume of business priorities elsewhere within ILF Scotland. We will continue to build these relationships through our involvement with organisations as capacity allows.

Objective: Our workforce is diverse and representative of the communities we serve.

We continued to drive forward our ability to attract diverse talent to ILF Scotland through our approach to recruitment from ensuring our equality objectives were part of our procurement, search, engagement and appointment processes. Whilst a candidate market, it is noted that the volume and diversity of interest in our vacancies demonstrated our success in achieving this with the candidates appointed enhancing our already diverse workforce.

Moving forward, we will remain focussed on this where there are opportunities to grow. In addition, we will continue to look inwards in terms of our ways of working, striving to do better, ensuring we are person and life centred, flexible in our approach to how people work and focussed on health and wellbeing objectives for our staff. As well, we will continue to empower and improve staff resilience through training and support as they continue to support disabled people across Scotland and Northern Ireland to live independently.

Objective: To introduce an Employee Passport Scheme

This has been completed.

To support colleagues with challenging personal circumstances, or with a disability, impairment or long-term health condition, we introduced a voluntary Employee Passport Scheme, which facilitates discussion with their line managers around necessary adjustments to work / workspaces.

Almost all of us will have circumstances, health conditions or commitments that impact our work at some point in our career. The introduction of a voluntary employee passport provides a framework for individuals to have a discussion with their line manager about their personal circumstances with a view to agreeing adjustments to support the employee to be their best in the workplace and beyond.

We also offered a well-being hour and in our 2023 employee engagement survey, 77.6% staff members stated that they welcome and use this. Following on from the 2022 to 2024 report, we have improved our non-contracted wellbeing hour offering by implementing a contracted 35-hour working week (FTE was previously 37 hours) from 1 April 2024. This offering to all colleagues is an overall reduction (pro-rated) of two hours with no reduction in salary. Our staff well-being continues to be front and centre of our decision making across the organisation. We plan to gauge staff feedback through our next Staff Survey in 2024.

We committed to continue to develop ILF Scotland as an inclusive and supportive workplace where everyone can contribute to the best of their abilities ensuring our workforce is as diverse and representative of the communities we serve.

Summary

We achieved many positive outcomes over the period of the last plan. In the latter part of the year, however, through necessity, we were required to prioritise the work needed to achieve the re-opening of ILF Scotland in April 2024, which was announced as part of the Programme for Government in September 2023. Therefore, progress across all our intended outcomes has perhaps been a little less than we anticipated. We have identified a more manageable number of outcomes for this current 2024 to 2026 plan to allow us to continue the development of the fund. Our Equality and Diversity Committee will hold regular meetings throughout 2024 to 2026.

We plan to undertake further work to our forms and systems to provide better equality data on protected characteristics across both funds to improve our monitoring and reporting practices in line with good practice.

ILF Scotland remains committed to embedding equality outcomes and will pursue further expansion and improvement on our approach to working in partnership with others to promote equality in Scotland.

Board Diversity Duty

The Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act 2018 sets an objective for public boards that they have 50% of non-executive members who are women.

ILF Scotland has worked proactively with the Scottish Government for a number of years to improve the diversity and gender balance of the ILF Scotland Board.

We have achieved greater than 50% female representation on our non-executive Board since 2015 and have sustained this position through to 2024, with 75% of board members being female.

We measure the representativeness of our Board on an ongoing basis.

We conducted an equality monitoring exercise with our Board and workforce in 2021, which has informed our future recruitment planning to ensure an even more diverse and equitable Board. People from ethnic minority groups are currently underrepresented on our Board.

We plan to address this through future recruitment campaigns by working closely with the Scottish Government Public Appointments Team. ILF Scotland currently follows The Equalities and Human Rights Commission six-step good practice guide.

Employee Information

In 2022 there were 4 women and 3 men.

In 2023 there were 4 women and 3 men.

In 2024 there were 6 women and 2 men.

	2022	2023	2024
Women	4	4	6
Men	3	3	2

Employee Information

Staff (Male / Female)

Female Employees: 78%

Male Employees: 22%

Full and Part Time Male / Female

Female Full Time: 56%

Male Full Time: 18%

Female Part Time: 22%

Male Part Time: 4%

Part time working pattern remains predominate toward women.

During 2023, 100% of staff worked within our hybrid working offering, with employee choice and control over whether they are working in the office or at home.

We used data capture and analysis to measure the representativeness of our workforce profile and use this information to identify improvement measures such as targeted recruitment.

The accuracy of our equality profile data is important as it can assist our Board and SMT to plan the workforce of the future and provides for the potential justification of allowable positive action to make improvements, leading to a workforce that reflects the population and geographical locations we work in.

Our workforce monitoring data indicates that we still have room for improvement in increasing the representation of disabled people and people from ethnic minority populations in our workforce. Our organisational demography by the end of Q4 2023 to 2024 was (78) and Directors (8).

Women are well represented in the general workforce and at managerial level: 78%:22% female: male. Women are underrepresented at Director / Senior Management Team Level.

We plan to address this through leadership / management development, succession planning and future recruitment to senior posts during 2024.

We have a good representation of disabled people with 20.2% self-identifying as disabled. As a comparison, in September 2023 the Scottish Government reported 8.7% of staff were disabled.

We have some representation of employees from ethnic minority groups employees from ethnic minority groups - 2.2%, a decrease from our previous representation of 4.10%. In September 2023, for comparison, the Scottish Government reported a figure of 2.9%.

The information we have on sexual orientation and gender reassignment is that 1.1% of staff identify as LGBTQI+. In September 2023, the Scottish Government reported a figure of 6.0%.

Data on the current workforce within ILF Scotland is robust in terms of age and sex. Data on the protected characteristics of ethnicity, disability, religion and belief, sexual orientation and gender reassignment continues to be limited due to the numbers of staff leaving questions unanswered during staff surveys or stating they would prefer not to answer.

Work continues to increase awareness throughout our workforce of the benefits of disclosing protected characteristic data as well as reassuring staff that this information is confidential.

As a positive measure in recruitment, we specifically encourage applicants with protected characteristics to apply for job vacancies. We are not alone in trying to meet the challenge of a representative workforce and this will continue to be a key focus of activity.

The findings from our 2023 employee engagement surveys indicate (88% response rate):

• 100% of our staff can and do continue to work flexibly and remotely.
• Life / Balance Opportunities: 96.6% stated that they were in control of this ‘most of the time’.
• 77.6% of staff members welcome and use the Well-Being Hour.
• 100% of our staff who responded stated that ILF Scotland is a good employer.

Our Accreditations:

Equality Outcomes 2024 to 2026

These are the draft new Outcomes for 2024 to 2026. ILF Scotland staff and Advisory, Stakeholder and Young Ambassadors group members have been consulted on these. They have gone to the ILF Scotland Equality Committee and SMT for sign off and then to the Remuneration Committee for information and the Board for final approval. They will be integrated as SMART objectives into our business plan.

Outcome 1: Integrated Equality Impact Assessments

Integrated Impact Assessments are consistently applied across the organisation with a commitment to have our staff members appropriately trained and our board members fully aware of this.

Action: Further embed the use of Equality Impact Screening and Assessment practices across all business functions by providing additional awareness and practice training to Managers by the end of 2024 to 2025.

Outcome 2: Promote Neuro Inclusion

To start the neuro inclusion journey within ILF Scotland focused on developing a neuro inclusive culture with the aim of creating even greater comfort and belonging for our diverse staff group.

Action: Raise awareness of neurodiversity and provide staff training to cover this area specifically as part of our equality and diversity training. Provide more detailed training to front line staff working in the Transition Fund so that they can provide and informed customer service to young people who are neurodivergent.

Outcome 3: Corporate Parenting

More young disabled people who are care experienced are aware of the Transition Fund and how to apply and our staff and Board members are aware of the Transition Fund and how it might positively impact care experienced young people.

Action: Through our Corporate Parenting Plan, we will further develop our communications strategy to target care experienced young people and those that support them to ensure they are aware of the Transition Fund. We will ensure ILF Scotland staff and Board Members are aware of the principles of Corporate Parenting through training courses and induction programmes.

Outcome 4: ILF Re-Opening

Following an announcement by the First Minister in September 2023, the Independent Living Fund, closed to new applications since 2010, re-opened to new applicants in April 2024. This will enable up to 1,000 additional disabled people with the most complex needs to access the support they need and deserve to live independent lives.

A Co-Production Working Group was established in October 2023, consisting of disabled people, carers, disabled people's organisations (DPOs) and representatives of ILF Scotland, the Scottish Government and health and social care statutory partners. A range of engagement events were held to seek views on the policy framework for the re-opened fund. A commitment was given to continue to develop policy in 2024 to 2025.

Action: Facilitate meetings of the Co-production Working Group every two months in 2024 to 2025, with the first meeting to be scheduled for June 2024. Report on learning from the first two months of receiving applications to the re-opened fund and work together with the group and others as required to further develop policies around the key issues raised by disabled people and others at the re-opening engagement events. Arrange further co-production opportunities with our recipients and others as part of our strategic planning consultations in the latter part of 2024 to 2025.

These equality outcomes will guide our progress and direction, which will be monitored by our Equality Committee. We will develop action plans and monitor and review these annually to ensure we remain on track and will update progress annually as well as updating plans with any relevant information due to unplanned and / or unforeseen national and international events.

Conclusion

We have always set equality outcomes with the intention that we truly embed equality, diversity and inclusion into our strategic and annual delivery plans and our daily activities. While we have not been able to achieve everything we set out to do, we recognise that we have still progressed and we remain committed to continue our equality journey.

Our Equality outcomes are co-produced through the work we do to engage with and listen to our recipients and our staff, then formally set by and approved by our Board. Board members provide the necessary scrutiny to ensure that we meet our duties and consider potential equality impacts as part of our corporate decision-making.

Our SMT shares responsibility for promoting and embedding equality in our plans, projects and operational processes.

Each employee also has an individual responsibility for considering equality issues in all areas of the work we do and in working with others to continually enhance our processes.

We will continue to instigate and implement innovative ways to understand the needs of our recipients, listening and working hard, to learn and improve what we do.

We will use the employee equality metrics in this report together with developing best practice, to support and inform our recruitment and employment practices, to improve our workforce equality and diversity and to promote the organisation as an employer of choice.

As a Non-Departmental Public Body, we ultimately aspire to continue to work in partnership with the Scottish Government and other Public Bodies, to be an inclusive employer and to continue to enhance the access to our services and the support provided to disabled people in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Appendix I: Equal Pay Gap Information

We report our pay gaps using a single measure, by comparing the average full-time equivalent earnings in 2023 to 2024 by gender. For example, the full-time gender pay gap compares the mean and median hourly pay, excluding overtime, of men and women. It is important to note that a pay gap does not necessarily mean a difference in pay for comparable jobs or work of equal value.

Gender Pay Gap by Grade

Administration

Grade A3
Female pay as a percentage of male pay: not applicable
Median Pay Gap: 0%
Mean Pay Gap: 0%

Grade A4
Female pay as a percentage of male pay: not applicable
Median Pay Gap: 0%
Mean Pay Gap: 0%

Specialist Professional and Technical

Grade B1
Female pay as a percentage of male pay: 95.71%
Median Pay Gap: 4.67%
Mean Pay Gap: 4.27%

Grade B2
Female pay as a percentage of male pay: 99.92%
Median Pay Gap: 0%
Mean Pay Gap: 0.09%

Grade B3
Female pay as a percentage of male pay: 95.49%
Median Pay Gap: 0%
Mean Pay Gap: 3.77%

Senior Management Team (SMT)

Grade C1
Female pay as a percentage of male pay: 100%
Median Pay Gap: 0%
Mean Pay Gap: 0%

Grade C2
Female pay as a percentage of male pay: 100%
Median Pay Gap: 0%
Mean Pay Gap: 0%

Grade C3
Female pay as a percentage of male pay: not applicable
Median Pay Gap: 0%
Mean Pay Gap: 0%

CEO

Grade SCS 1
Female pay as a percentage of male pay: not applicable
Median Pay Gap: 0%
Mean Pay Gap: 0%

All comparable jobs or work of equal value are paid on the same scale. The pay gap in 2023 to 2024 is entirely due to spinal placement on the grade and will even out as employees reach the top of their scale.

This is set out in table form below.

Gender Pay Gap by Grade

Job Type	Grade	Female pay as a percentage of male pay	Median Pay Gap	Mean Pay Gap
Administration	A3	n/a	0%	0%
Administration	A4	n/a	0%	0%
Specialist Professional and Technical	B1	95.71%	4.67%	4.27%
Specialist Professional and Technical	B2	99.92%	0%	0.09%
Specialist Professional and Technical	B3	95.49%	0%	3.77%
SMT	C1	100%	0%	0%
SMT	C2	100%	0%	0%
SMT	C3	n/a	0%	0%
CEO	SCS 1	n/a	0%	0%

Where men and women are undertaking work of equal value, they are paid a similar hourly rate and consequently the gender pay gap is low.

Appendix II: Equal Pay Statement

This Equal Pay Statement outlines ILF Scotland’s support for the principle of equal opportunities in employment.

ILF Scotland is committed to the principles of equality of opportunity in employment and believes that staff should receive equal pay for the same or broadly similar work, or work rated as equivalent and for work of equal value. This will be regardless of their age, disability, ethnicity or race, gender reassignment, marital or civil partnership status, pregnancy, political beliefs, religion or belief, sex or sexual orientation.

To achieve this, we will operate pay and progression systems that are transparent, based on objective criteria and free from unlawful bias.

Foreword

We are pleased to introduce ILF Scotland’s Mainstreaming and Equalities Outcome Report, which outlines how we will continue to work to deliver our equalities duties and achieve our vision that all disabled people, and those with a long-term health condition, can access the support they need to lead an independent life. Our Strategic Plan 2020 to 2023 ‘Hope & Ambition’, Delivery Plan 2020 to 2023 and our suite of policies demonstrate our commitment to promoting equality.

This document highlights the progress we have made in delivering our 2022 to 2023 equalities outcomes and confirms our equalities’ outcomes for 2023 to 2024 and the actions we will take to achieve them. We will review our progress and planning relating to equalities on an annual basis.

The continuation of COVID-19 emphasised the effect of some of the social and economic inequalities within our nation and our communities. Evidence exists to show how the pandemic has disproportionately affected people with protected characteristics, economically and in relation to their ability to access necessary services.

In our previous report, we identified a resultant increase in mental health issues across all age groups, but particularly in the older and younger population who reported experiencing significant feelings of loneliness and isolation.

These issues directly affected a number of our recipients in both our 2015 and Transition Funds. As an organisation, we continuously strive to play our part in the wider equalities agenda and to improve our performance in relation to equalities across every part of our business. We have made progress in the last year, but we are aware of the work we still need to do. We will continuously strive to strengthen our approach and to achieve equality outcomes, providing evidence of our achievements and of the work we do with our partners to support and promote equalities in a wider context.

As a fair work organisation working with disabled people, we regularly review our working practices to ensure that equality, diversity and inclusion are at the centre of our decision-making. Our Board and staff group are diverse and well informed and we will continue with this working strategy as we begin to emerge from this pandemic and

beyond.

In this report, we set out our equality focus for the next two years.

Susan Douglas Scott CBE
ILF Scotland Board Chair

Peter Scott OBE
ILF Scotland CEO

1. About Us

ILF Scotland is a Non Departmental Public Body (NDPB), governed by a Board of Directors, appointed by and accountable to Scottish Ministers. It operates as a discretionary fund providing financial awards to approximately 4,000 disabled people in Scotland and Northern Ireland to help them live independently. The 2015 Fund enables individuals to pay for support so that they can live with control, choice and dignity in their homes and within their local communities. The Transition Fund for 16-25 year-olds, provides grants, for up to one year, to support young disabled people to improve their independence and participate more in their communities.

ILF Scotland employs 65 people:

A team of 3 in Northern Ireland and a team of 62 in Scotland, made up of 39 support staff in the Livingston office and 26 home-based assessors. We actively recruit colleagues with disabilities and long-term health conditions. In addition, we have 7 Board members, 4 of whom identify as disabled (57%).

2. Introduction

This is our second Equalities Outcomes and Mainstreaming Report. In this, we report on our progress against our equalities outcomes for the period 2021 to 2022 and demonstrate our commitment to equality as a provider of public services and as an employer. The report sets out our equality outcomes and actions for 2022-24.

3. Legal Framework

The Equality Act 2010 sets out the ‘general equality duty’ for all public authorities who must have due regard to:

• Eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation and other prohibited conduct.
• Advance equality of opportunity between people who share a relevant protected characteristic and those who do not, particularly by removing or minimising disadvantage; meeting the needs of particular groups that are different from the needs of others; and encouraging participation in public life.
• Foster good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not.

The Equality Act 2010 also lists nine protected characteristics and defines direct and indirect discrimination as: “Where someone is treated less favourably according to a protected characteristic or could be disadvantaged compared to someone who does not share that protected characteristic.”

The protected characteristics are Age; Disability; Gender reassignment; Marriage and Civil Partnership; Pregnancy and Maternity; Race; Religion or Belief; Sex; and Sexual Orientation.

It is against the law to discriminate against anyone because of these characteristics. At ILF Scotland we recognise and understand how unequal treatment under any characteristic impacts on people and particularly those who are living with more than one or multiple protected characteristics.

ILF Scotland must comply with the Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties) (Scotland) Regulations 2012 and the specific duties designed to help Scottish public authorities meet the general duty. Regulation 4 of the specific equality duties requires that we base our Equality Outcomes on evidence, and involvement of equality groups.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) regulate performance against equalities duties. From April 2020, ILF Scotland is required to report on the areas outlined below, every two years, apart from the Statement on Equal Pay, which is every four years. In addition, we have a duty to publish diversity information about our Board members. We are required to publish our report on progress to achieve our equality outcomes by 30 April 2023.

This report meets our general and specific duties under the Equality Act 2010 and outlines:

• Mainstreaming the Equality Duty in ILF Scotland
• Report on Progress
• Board Diversity Duty
• Employee Information
• Gender Pay Gap Information
• Statement on Equal Pay (covering sex only).

4. Mainstreaming the Equality Duty in ILF Scotland

Introduction

Mainstreaming equality and diversity is a long-term, strategic approach to ensure that equality, diversity, and inclusion sit at the heart of organisational culture and strategic and operational delivery. ILF Scotland aims to contribute positively toward achieving an equal, inclusive and just society.

We will work in partnership with the Scottish Government and other organisations to do this. We commit to continuing to embed good practice in equalities across our organisation. We will continue to aim for greater diversity in our workforce and will benchmark with other public authorities to learn and further embed equalities within our strategic and operational activities.

We have the commitment, encouragement and supportof our Board and our Senior Management Team to make sure that all members of our staff understand, accept, and embrace equalities across every part of our organisation and in the services we deliver. We believe that mainstreaming equality has many benefits including helping us to:

• Put equality at the heart of everything we do.
• Embrace diversity across our organisation.
• Attract and retain a motivated workforce, rich in talent, skills and experiences.
• Continually improve the way in which we deliver our services, making sure they meet the diverse needs of our recipients.
• Be more inclusive and better engage with those most excluded from society.
• Improve our performance.
• Deliver our Strategic and Delivery Plans.

At ILF Scotland, we believe that we perform strongly in embracing our equalities commitment and work hard to implement the principles of equality. We are keen to learn from our achievements and continuously improve our performance in this area. Since publishing our first plan in April 2021, we have delivered various initiatives aimed at improving and mainstreaming equalities including strategically placing staff well-being, equality, diversity, inclusion, flexibility and development at the heart of our business strategy. We acknowledge the need to improve further in terms of reporting on outcomes and delivering on equality plans.

4.2 Partners

Key partners in our approach to equality include the Scottish Government and NDPB HR network and forum where core Scottish Government and other Public Bodies share best practice discussing equality and diversity policy and practice.

We are keen to expand and improve on our approach to working in partnership with others on equality as this will be valuable for shared learning and has the potential to act as a critical friend to our activity and projects on race and disability.

We submitted a formal response to the Scottish Government’s consultation on the Public Sector Equalities Duty Reporting Arrangements.

We took part in a consultation around gender equality, involving our Young Ambassadors.

4.3 Progress

We have made good progress in the last 12 months as discussed below. Recipients of both our funds are disabled people. Our funding helps our recipients to access the same opportunities as others and achieve their personal independent living outcomes. We continuously review our strategies, plans, policies and practice to provide the best service we can.

5. Communication and Engagement with our Recipients

Communication

We ensure that all our communications are free from discriminatory and unacceptable language. We make our documents available in a range of alternative languages and accessible formats, including ‘easy read’. We ensure that we co-produce any documents, marketing materials, content and letters as much and as often as we can with our recipients and their representatives. In 2022 to 2023, we:

• Published an annual Equality Duty Action Plan on our website.
• We distributed two newsletters, individual letters and mailouts (for those who communicate with us online) to provide policy and operational updates.
• Updated our website regularly and the organisation’s social media daily to keep our recipients and other stakeholders up to date with the wider health and social care agenda, ILF policies and operational guidance.
• Further involved our 2015 recipients, Advisory, Stakeholder,and Young Ambassador members in determining the content of our published policies and letters to recipients.
• Co-produced two 2015 Fund case studies with two Scottish recipients that were published on our website and social media channels.

5.2 Engagement

2015 Fund

We continued to demonstrate flexibility in our policies and awarded additional funding for support needed as a result of new outbreaks of COVID-19. For example, we provided funding for carer respite in exceptional circumstances to avoid the collapse of care and the potential for our recipients to have to go into a care home or hospital.

We engaged with disabled recipients and their representatives via our Recipient Advisory Group in Scotland and our Stakeholder Group in Northern Ireland. We successfully recruited more disabled recipients / their representatives as members to these groups.

The Groups directly input into reviews of our policies, led on the ongoing delivery of our ‘Charter for Involvement’ commitments, leading to increased involvement of members in our work, and held ongoing discussions about the possibility of re-opening the 2015 Fund in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Transition Fund

We continued to strengthen and further develop our joint working with the Young Ambassadors Group of disabled young people who have received grants from the Transition Fund. We recruited additional members to the group and members worked with us by participating in campaigns to help promote the Transition Fund, attending meetings and providing feedback and suggestions about the ongoing operation and development of the Fund.

Our Young Ambassadors, worked with us to deliver a hugely successful event in Glasgow on 30 November 2022, to celebrate five years of delivering the Fund. Young recipients spoke to the audience about what they had used their funding for and the difference it made to their lives.

In addition, members worked with us to develop a new Technology Grant. We launched this as part of the Transition Fund in December 2022 and to the end of March, we received 419 applications and paid out grants of around £220,000.

In addition, we delivered and attended 89 events, presentations and workshops involving many organisations who support young disabled people. There were around 1600 attendees at these events.

We made significant progress against our Corporate Parenting Plan actions as part of our Transition Fund management, directed at care-experienced young people, many of whom also have a disability or impairment. We specifically targeted organisations working with care experienced young people to raise awareness of the Transition Fund and the relevance to this marginalised group.

6. Our Staff

At ILF Scotland we work hard to promote an inclusive and respectful culture, where all voices are heard and valued. To continue to highlight our equality duty responsibilities, during 2022 to 2023, we:

• Delivered regular, compulsory, equality and diversity training to all staff with a particular focus on disabilities.
• Included equality and diversity training in our induction pack.
• Trained all staff on unconscious / conscious bias across the nine protected characteristics on a regular basis. We believe that we all have unconscious bias and we must tackle this across our workplace to ensure equality and diversity.
• Continued to carry out Equality Impact Assessments (EQIAs) when we developed external policies and worked towards extending EQIAs across our internal policies, plans and projects as well. We raised awareness across the organisation of our impact assessment tool and screening assessment plan and provided management with training on Equality Impact Assessment.
• Developed our equality policies further, to ensure we treat everyone fairly in all day-to-day activities and work related decisions (recruitment, promotion, allocating work, pay, etc.) We embrace people’s differences, as a more diverse workforce is more productive too, but we know we can do more.
• Proactively invited applications from a diverse cohort of candidates. ILF Scotland believes the more diverse our workforce, the better the decision-making, taking into account a diverse range of ideas and cultures.
• Actively recruited disabled members of staff.
• Engaged our legal advisors, when appropriate, for sound advice on complex, work related, equality and diversity issues.
• Reported on any equality duties at our management meetings as a standing agenda item.
• Engaged with PCS Union about new initiatives aimed at proactively addressing Equality and Diversity in our workplace.
• Continued to distribute internal newsletters to staff to ensure that they were fully up to date with any organisational policy and business updates.
• Enabled and empowered the voice of our employees through employee engagement surveys. 

In 2022 to 2023, we continued to experience the effect of COVID-19, albeit to a lesser extent that previously. We supported staff to safely resume home review visits and continued to focus on protecting the mental health and wellbeing of our staff, introducing further initiatives and encouraging colleagues to talk openly about health and well-being. Colleagues continue to embrace all of this wholeheartedly and provide excellent peer support to the best of their abilities. To help address this, we:

• Provided our staff with a wide range of mental health and resilience training and support and trained members of staff to become internal mental health first aiders.
• Continued to encourage staff to take a half-hour each week for personal wellness.

7. Report on Progress against Outcomes 2022 - 2023

Outcome 1

Equality Impact Assessment is consistently applied across the organisation.

Outcome 2

The Transition Fund has an appropriate reach across all eligible disabled young people in Scotland.

Outcome 3

Our services are targeted and appropriately tailored to our customers with one or more protected characteristics, taking account of those from a disadvantaged socio-economic background.

Outcome 4

We provide comprehensive monitoring and reporting on protected characteristics in line with good practice guidance.

Outcome 5

Our Communications Strategy appropriately reaches those people with protected characteristics and commits to ensuring improved access across our services and information.

Outcome 6

We work with, learn from and benchmark with similar public authorities to help us to promote equalities in a wider context.

Outcome 7

Our workforce is diverse and representative of the communities we serve.

Outcome 8

Colleagues will be supported in the event of personal circumstances / impairment, or a long term health condition means they require adjustments to their work or workplace.

We made good progress in delivering our 2022 to 2023 action plan and completed the majority of actions. In particular, we surveyed our Transition Fund recipients and feedback was very positive about all aspects of using the fund, including the application process, receiving and spending their grant, and their contact / communication with ILFS staff. TF recipients also reported they would not have been able to achieve their desired outcomes without the funding, and that the personalised ways in which they can use the fund was beneficial.

We introduced a voluntary Employee Passport Scheme to the ILF Scotland workforce, which provides a framework for employees to discuss with line managers, personal circumstances, disabilities, or long-term health conditions that might impact their work at some point in their career and agree any adjustments needed.

The impact of COVID-19 on our work has meant that we continue to try to catch up and demonstrate the progress we are making to mainstream equalities across all areas of our business. We have not, therefore, achieved all of our stated outcomes and some actions are only partially complete or delayed. Appendix 1 to this report shows the detail of this. We have included those outcomes yet to be fully achieved along with associated actions in our Action Plan for 2023 to 2024, detailed in section 8, below.

In evaluating our progress, we recognise that we still have much to do and so we will continue to upskill our staff and listen to the diversity of community voices across Scotland. We will be open in our decision-making about what we can and cannot do and we will continue to explore the relationship that ILF Scotland has in delivering social care services that impact positively on the lives of disabled people and will continue to work to improve our services to our recipients.

8. Equality Outcomes 2023 - 2024

Our Equality Outcomes that we will integrate as SMART Objectives into our business plan for the next year are:

Outcome 1:

Equality Impact Assessment is consistently applied across the organisation.

Action: Further embed the use of Equality Impact Screening and Assessment Practices across all business functions by providing additional awareness and practice training to Managers by the end of Q3 in 2022 to 2023.

Outcome 2:

The Transition Fund has an appropriate reach across all eligible disabled young people in Scotland.

Action: Continue work to analyse the reach of the Transition Fund during 2023 to 2024 across all protected characteristics and taking account of poverty and geography so that by the end of 2024 we can confidently say that we reach all eligible young people in Scotland that require assistance in their transition, engaging with groups of young disabled people with protected characteristics that are underrepresented.

Outcome 3:

Our services are targeted and appropriately tailored to our customers with one or more protected characteristics, taking account of those from a disadvantaged socio-economic background.

Action: Continue progress to develop comprehensive customer feedback mechanisms to capture information about people who access our services who have multiple characteristics  under the Equalities Act and include those people who experience poverty and work with them / representative parties to better target and tailor our services by the end of 2024.

Outcome 4:

We provide comprehensive monitoring and reporting on protected characteristics in line with good practice guidance.

Action: Amend our forms and systems to provide better equalities monitoring information on protected characteristics across both funds to improve our monitoring and reporting practices, taking account of any revised guidance from Scottish Government following the recent consultation by the end of 2024.

Outcome 5:

Our Communications Strategy appropriately reaches those people with protected characteristics and commits to ensuring improved access across our services and information.

Action: Complete the Communications Strategy to include appropriate commitments by the end of Q2 2023 to 2024 and publish this in Q3.

Outcome 6:

We work with, learn from and benchmark with similar public authorities to help us to promote equalities in a wider context.

Action: Reach out to and engage regularly with relevant public bodies to improve the reach of our equalities actions by the end of 2024.

Outcome 7:

Our workforce is diverse and representative of the communities we serve.

Action: Develop additional HR initiatives to ensure the representativeness and diversity of our workforce by the end of 2024.

Outcome 8:

Colleagues will be supported in the event of personal circumstances / disabilities / long term health conditions that may impact their work.

These outcomes will guide our progress and direction. Our Equalities Committee will review progress at each quarterly meeting to ensure we remain on track. We will update them as required in response to progress or any relevant unplanned and unforeseen national and international events. We will report against or progress in 12 months to our Board and publish a new Equalities Outcomes and Monitoring Report for the period 2024 to 2027 in April 2024.

We have set ambitious equality outcomes with the intention that we embed equality, diversity and inclusion into our strategic and annual delivery plans. Our Senior Management Team shares responsibility for promoting and embedding equality in our plans, projects and operations processes.

Our Board approved our equalities outcomes and Board members understand that the Board is responsible for providing the necessary scrutiny to ensure that we meet our duties and consider potential equality impacts as part of our corporate decision-making.

9. Board Diversity Duty

The Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act 2018 sets an objective for public boards that they have 50% of non-executive members who are women. ILF Scotland has worked proactively with the Scottish Government for a number of years to improve the diversity and gender balance of the ILF Scotland Board.

We have achieved greater than 50% female representation on our non-executive Board since 2015 and have sustained this position through to 2022, with 57% of board members being female.

We measure the representativeness of our Board on an ongoing basis. We conducted an equality monitoring exercise with our Board and workforce in 2021, which has informed our future recruitment planning to ensure an even more diverse and equitable Board.

Ethnicity is currently under-represented on our Board. We plan to address this through future recruitment campaigns by working closely with the Public Appointments Team through Scottish Government.

ILF Scotland currently follows The Equalities and Human Rights Commission six-step good practice guide. How to improve board diversity: a six step guide to good practice | Equality and Human Rights Commission (equalityhumanrights.com)

In 2020 there were 3 men and 4 women.

In 2021 there were 3 men and 4 women.

In 2022 there were 3 men and 4 women.

10. Employee Information

We used data capture and analysis to measure the representativeness of our workforce profile and use this information to identify improvement measures such as targeted recruitment. Our workforce monitoring data indicates that we are predominantly a white and able-bodied organisation. Our organisational demography by the end of Q4 2021 to 2022 is staff (65) and Directors (7).

Women are well represented in the general workforce and at managerial level - 77% : 23% female: male. Women are under-represented at Director / Senior Management Team Level.

We have a good representation of disability – 16.92% self-identified as disabled. As a comparison, in March 2022 the Scottish Government reported 8.6%.

We have some representation of black and minority ethnicity - 4.61% BAME. In March 2022, the Scottish Government reported a figure of 3.0%.

The information we have on sexual orientation is that 0% of staff identify as LGBT. In March 2022, the Scottish Government reported a figure of 5.8%.

As a positive action measure in recruitment, we ask on all adverts for applicants with protected characteristics to apply for job vacancies. We are not alone in trying to meet the challenge of a representative workforce and this will continue to be a key focus of activity for next year.

The findings from our 2022 employee engagement surveys indicate (85% response rate):

• 100% of our staff continue to work flexibly and can work remotely.
• Life / Balance Opportunities -96.6% were in control at very least ‘most of the time’.
• 100% of our staff who responded stated that ILF Scotland is a good employer.

11. Equal Paygap Information

We report our pay gaps using a single measure, by comparing the average full-time equivalent earnings in 2021-22 by gender. For example, the full-time gender pay gap compares the mean and median hourly pay, excluding overtime, of men and women. It is important to note that a pay gap does not necessarily mean a difference in pay for comparable jobs or work of equal value.

	Grade	Women’s pay as a % of men’s pay	Median Pay Gap	Mean Pay Gap
Administration	A3	100%	0%	0%
Administration	A4	n/a	0%	0%
Specialist Professional and Technical	B1	93.97%	6.88%	6.02%
Specialist Professional and Technical	B2	103.31%	0%	-3.33%
Specialist Professional and Technical	B3	101.9%	-9.83%	-1.91%
SMT	C1	86.02%	13.98%	13.98%
SMT	C2	100%	0%	0%
SMT	C3	n/a	0%	0%
CEO	SCS1	n/a	0%	0%

All comparable jobs or work of equal value are paid on the same scale. The pay gap in 2021 is entirely due to spinal placement on the grade and will even out as employees reach the top of their scale.

Employee Profiles 2022

Staff (M/F)

• Female Employees – 76.56%
• Male Employees – 24.43%

Full & Part Time M/F

• Female Full Time – 32
• Male Full Time – 12
• Female Part Time – 18
• Male Part Time – 3

Employee profile commentary

• Part time working pattern is slightly predominate toward women.
• During 2022, we put 'blended working' in place as part of our COVID-19 recovery journey. This will be important as the impact of 'working from home' influences people's future choices / preferences.

Employee profile actions to consider

• All recruitment campaigns should be informed by the diversity profile to identify potential for positive targeted action.
• Consider the 'blended working' data to inform strategic planning.
• Share this data with our staff group.

12. Equal Pay Settlement

The Equal Pay Statement outlines ILF Scotland’s support for the principle of equal opportunities in employment. ILF Scotland is committed to the principles of equality of opportunity in employment and believes that staff should receive equal pay for the same or broadly similar work, or work rated as equivalent and for work of equal value. This will be regardless of their age, disability, ethnicity or race, gender reassignment, marital or civil partnership status, pregnancy, political beliefs, religion or belief, sex or sexual orientation.

To achieve this, we will operate pay systems that are transparent, based on objective criteria and free from unlawful bias.

13. Conclusion

We will use the information in this report to support and inform our recruitment and employment practice to improve our workforce equality and diversity.

Data on the current workforce within ILF Scotland is robust in terms of age and sex. Data on the protected characteristics of ethnicity, disability, religion and belief, sexual orientation and gender reassignment continues to be limited due to the numbers of staff leaving questions unanswered or stating they would prefer not to answer. Work continues to increase awareness throughout our workforce to the benefits of disclosing protected characteristic data as well as reassuring staff that this information is confidential.

The accuracy of our equality profile data is important as it can assist our Board and SMT to plan the workforce of the future and provides justification for allowable positive action to make improvements leading to a workforce that reflects the population and geographical locations we work in.

As a Public Body, we aspire to work firstly in partnership with the Scottish Government and other Public Bodies. It will be increasingly important for us to continue to work in partnership as we promote the Independent Living Fund Scotland as an employer of choice as we continue to support disabled people in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Appendix 1

Progress against Outcomes 2022 - 2023

Objective: ILF Scotland’s activities are informed by a proactive approach to mainstreaming equalities, based on a programme of continuous improvement and co-production, internally and externally.

Action: Set up an Equality and Diversity Committee by the end of Q2 to benchmark ILF Scotland against comparable organisations and identify areas for improvement by the end of Q4. Complete. Our Equality and Diversity Committee has informed our annual staff survey, and our recruitment and succession plans with work continuing to ensure our programme of learning and development offers equal opportunity.

Action: Embed an EQIA prompt in our project planning tool in Q1 to assist with EQIA awareness. Complete

Action: Continue to raise awareness from Q1, across the organisation, of our impact assessment tool and screening assessment plan to embed this further, which will enable us to apply good equality practice across the organisation. Partially Complete

Action: Provide further staff training to Managers during 2022 to 2023 to encourage good practice in equalities and the mainstreaming of equalities across all business functions and staff teams. Complete

Action: Management Team Awareness raising held in during 2022 to 2023. Complete

Objective: We have improved our ongoing service delivery in response to feedback from the COVID-19 recipient feedback survey.

Action: Draw up an action plan following the analysis of the recipient feedback survey responses in Q1 and implement these in Q2. Complete

Objective: We have taken positive action to improve the diversity of our workforce to ensure that it is representative of the community we serve.

Action: We will use our diversity profile to inform recruitment campaigns during 2021 to 2022 to identify potential for positive targeted action and monitor any resultant change / success at the end of Q4. Partially Complete. Equalities elements included in recruitment campaigns from job advert stage. Further development work required.

Action: Our Equality and Diversity Committee will inform our annual staff survey, our programme of learning and development, and our recruitment and succession plans and will be in a position to report on these at the end of Q4. Complete

Objective: We are accessible to all people who have protected characteristics, and everyone that we engage with finds us to be an open and welcoming organisation.

Action: We will produce a Communications Strategy by the end of Q2, which will set out how we will specifically target people who have protected characteristics with our communications over Q3 and Q4. Partially Complete. Communication Strategy production delayed. Rescheduled for Q2 2022 to 2023. We are developing our Communications Strategy to specifically target people who have protected characteristics. Short life working group to assess accessibility of publications established. Further development work required. We have staff booked onto courses in Easy Read with a view to creating, updating and publishing additional key policies and documents, including our Privacy Notice in accessible formats.

Objective: The recipient profile of ILF Scotland’s Transition Fund reflects Scotland’s diverse population and in particular those young disabled people who have protected characteristics.

Action: We will work to gain a better understanding of the profile of our Transition Fund recipient base during Q2 and Q3 and will develop responses to address any under-representation from Q4 onwards. Complete

Action: Targeted work in key geographical areas of recognised deprivation and underrepresentation and with corporate partners within these areas to help increase uptake in applications from groups that are traditionally more difficult to engage with. In Q3 and Q4, we will identify community partners / groups that can help us access different cohorts of young disabled people who might benefit from the Fund. Complete. Targeted work within the deaf community. Commenced work on the Corporate Parenting Action Plan drawing in CAHMS & care-experienced young people and young people with mental health impairments.

Objective: Our staff will be supported to work flexible hours and in flexible ways including working from home that suits individuals and allows them to achieve a good home life and work balance.

Action: We issued a survey in Q2 to explore ‘blended working’ as we plan our COVID-19 recovery journey and use this to inform our strategic planning. Complete

Objective: We work with our partners to support and promote equalities in a wider context and learn from and benchmark with other public authorities.

Action: Engage with Equality and Diversity leads in the Scottish Government and identify other NDPBs that we can work collaboratively with to improve our equality and diversity initiatives and evidence of mainstreaming equality and improving diversity. Partially Complete. Equality and Diversity leads contacted and list of benchmark organisations compiled. Further development work required.

Objective: Our Stakeholder Group in Northern Ireland is more representative of the recipients of our 2015 Fund.

Action: Undertake awareness raising and recruitment exercise in Q3 to encourage more disabled ILF Scotland recipients to be active members of the NI Stakeholder Group. Complete.

Contact us

ILF Scotland
Ground Floor, Denholm House,
Almondvale Business Park,
Almondvale Way,
Livingston,
EH54 6GA
Telephone: 0300 200 2022
Email: enquiries@ILF.scot

If you need this document in an alternative format, please contact us.

Foreword

We are pleased to introduce ILF Scotland’s second Mainstreaming and Equalities Outcome Report, which outlines how we will continue to work to deliver our equalities duties and achieve our vision that all disabled people, and those with a long-term health condition, can access the support they need to lead an independent life. Our Strategic Plan 2020-23 ‘Hope & Ambition’ Delivery Plan 2020-23 and our suite of policies demonstrate our commitment to promoting equality.

This document highlights the progress we have made in delivering our 2021-22 equalities outcomes and confirms our equalities’ outcomes for 2022-23 and the actions we will take to achieve them. We will review our progress and planning relating to equalities on an annual basis.

The continuation of COVID-19 emphasised the effect of some of the social and economic inequalities within our nation and our communities. Evidence exists to show how the pandemic has disproportionately affected people with protected characteristics, economically and in relation to their ability to access necessary services.

In our previous report, we identified a resultant increase in mental health issues across all age groups, but particularly in the older and younger population who reported experiencing significant feelings of loneliness and isolation. These issues directly affected a number of our recipients in both our 2015 and Transition Funds.

As an organisation, we continuously strive to play our part in the wider equalities agenda and to improve our performance in relation to equalities across every part of our business. We have made progress in the last year but we are aware of the work we still need to do. We will continuously strive to strengthen our approach and to achieve equality outcomes, providing evidence of our achievements and of the work we do with our partners to support and promote equalities in a wider context.

As a fair work organisation working with disabled people, we regularly review our working practices to ensure that equality, diversity and inclusion are at the centre of our decision-making. Our Board and staff group are diverse and well informed and we will continue with this working strategy as we begin to emerge from this pandemic and beyond.

In this report, we set out our equality focus for the next two years.

Susan Douglas Scott CBE
ILF Scotland Board Chair

Peter Scott OBE
ILF Scotland CEO

1. About us

ILF Scotland is a Non Departmental Public Body (NDPB), governed by a Board of Directors,
appointed by and accountable to Scottish Ministers. It operates as a discretionary fund providing financial awards to approximately 4,000 disabled people in Scotland and Northern Ireland to help them live independently. The 2015 Fund enables individuals to pay for support so that they can live with control, choice and dignity in their homes and within their local communities. The Transition Fund for 16-25 year-olds, provides grants, for up to one year, to support young disabled people to improve their independence and participate more in their communities.

ILF Scotland employs 66 people:

A team of 4 in Northern Ireland and a team of 62 in Scotland, made up of 39 support staff in the Livingston office and 23 home-based assessors. We actively recruit colleagues with disabilities and long-term health conditions. In addition, we have 7 Board members, 4 of whom identify as disabled (57%).

2. Introduction

This is our second Equalities Outcomes and Mainstreaming Report. In this, we report on our progress against our equalities outcomes for the period 2021 to 2022 and demonstrate our commitment to equality as a provider of public services and as an employer. The report sets out our equality outcomes and actions for 2022-24.

3. Legal framework

The Equality Act 2010 sets out the ‘general equality duty’ for all public authorities who must have due regard to:

• Eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation and other prohibited conduct.
• Advance equality of opportunity between people who share a relevant protected characteristic and those who do not, particularly by removing or minimising disadvantage; meeting the needs of particular groups that are different from the needs of others; and encouraging participation in public life.
• Foster good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not.

The Equality Act 2010 also lists nine protected characteristics and defines direct and indirect discrimination as: “Where someone is treated less favourably according to a protected characteristic or could be disadvantaged compared to someone who does not share that protected characteristic.”

The protected characteristics are Age; Disability; Gender reassignment; Marriage and Civil Partnership; Pregnancy and Maternity; Race; Religion or Belief; Sex; and Sexual Orientation.

It is against the law to discriminate against anyone because of these characteristics. At ILF Scotland we recognise and understand how unequal treatment under any characteristic impacts on people and particularly those who are living with more than one or multiple protected characteristics.

ILF Scotland must comply with the Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties) (Scotland) Regulations 2012 and the specific duties designed to help Scottish public authorities meet the general duty. Regulation 4 of the specific equality duties requires that we base our Equality Outcomes on evidence, and involvement of equality groups.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) regulate performance against equalities duties. From April 2020, ILF Scotland is required to report on the areas outlined below, every two years, apart from the Statement on Equal Pay, which is every four years. In addition, we have a duty to publish diversity information about our Board members. We are required to publish our report on progress to achieve our equality outcomes by 30 April 2022.

This report meets our general and specific duties under the Equality Act 2010 and outlines:

• mainstreaming the Equality Duty in ILF Scotland
• report on Progress
• board Diversity Duty
• employee Information
• gender Pay Gap Information
• statement on Equal Pay (covering sex only)

4. Mainstreaming the Equality Duty in ILF Scotland

Introduction

Mainstreaming equality and diversity is a long-term, strategic approach to ensure that equality, diversity, and inclusion sit at the heart of organisational culture and strategic and operational delivery. ILF Scotland aims to contribute positively toward achieving an equal, inclusive and just society.

We will work in partnership with the Scottish Government and other organisations to do this. We commit to continuing to embed good practice in equalities across our organisation. We will continue to aim for greater diversity in our workforce and will benchmark with other public authorities to learn and further embed equalities within our strategic and operational activities.

We have the commitment, encouragement and support of our Board and our Senior Management Team to make sure that all members of our staff understand, accept, and embrace equalities across every part of our organisation and in the services we deliver. We believe that mainstreaming equality has many benefits including helping us to:

• Put equality at the heart of everything we do.
• Embrace diversity across our organisation.
• Attract and retain a motivated workforce, rich in talent, skills and experiences.
• Continually improve the way in which we deliver our services, making sure they meet the diverse needs of our recipients.
• Be more inclusive and better engage with those most excluded from society.
• Improve our performance.
• Deliver our Strategic and Delivery Plans.

At ILF Scotland, we believe that we perform strongly in embracing our equalities commitment and work hard to implement the principles of equality. We are keen to learn from our achievements and continuously improve our performance in this area. Since publishing our first plan in April 2021, we have delivered various initiatives aimed at improving and mainstreaming equalities including strategically placing staff well-being, equality, diversity, inclusion, flexibility and development at the heart of our business strategy. We acknowledge the need to improve further in terms of reporting on outcomes and delivering on equality plans.

4.2 Partners

Key partners in our approach to equality include the Scottish Government and NDPB HR network and forum where core Scottish Government and other Public Bodies share best practice discussing equality and diversity policy and practice.

We are keen to expand and improve on our approach to working in partnership with others on equality as this will be valuable for shared learning and has the potential to act as a critical friend to our activity and projects on race and disability.

We submitted a formal response to the Scottish Government’s consultation on the Public Sector Equalities Duty Reporting Arrangements.

We took part in a consultation around gender equality, involving our Young Ambassadors.

4.3 Progress

We have made good progress in the last 12 months as discussed below. Recipients of both our funds are disabled people. Our funding helps our recipients to access the same opportunities as others and achieve their personal independent living outcomes. We continuously review our strategies, plans, policies and practice to provide the best service we can.

5. Communication and Engagement with our Recipients

Communication

We ensure that all our communications are free from discriminatory and unacceptable language. We make our documents available in a range of alternative languages and accessible formats, including ‘easy read’. We ensure that we co-produce any documents, marketing materials and letters as much and as often as we can with our recipients and their representatives. In 2021-22, we:

• Published an annual Equality Duty Action Plan on our website.
• We distributed two newsletters, individual letters and mailouts (for those who communicate with us online) to provide policy and operational updates.
• Updated our website regularly and the organisation’s social media daily to keep our recipients and other stakeholders up to date with the wider health and social care agenda and to ensure they were informed of the COVID-19 policy position and operational guidance.
• Further involved our 2015 recipients, Advisory Stakeholder and Young Ambassador members
• in our PR and communication campaigns. We directly involved recipients to share their experiences during the pandemic for PR and communications campaigns to highlight to the wider community and
• stakeholders about the impact of COVID-19 on disabled people.
• Further developed our Action Plan in preparation for developing our Gaelic Language Plan.

5.2 Engagement

We implemented suggestions in 2021-22 from the findings of a survey we conducted in 2020-21 to further support our recipients during and after the pandemic.

In the 2015 Fund, we continued to apply our policies as flexibly as possible and paid out just under £387k in additional funding to pay for replacement support where normal support services could not be provided. We helped pay for additional COVID-19 related expenditure such as PPE equipment, travel, etc. We provided funding for carer respite in exceptional circumstances to avoid the collapse of care and the potential for our recipients to have to go into a care home or hospital.

We carried out approximately 4,000 welfare and wellbeing calls providing support and guidance to our recipients during the pandemic.

In the Transition Fund, young people applying to the Fund, reported on the continued absence of traditional statutory transition support services due to the pandemic and on the social isolation they experienced because they could not participate in their community due to the lack of day services, college attendance and activities.

To support young people, we:

• Applied our Transition Fund policies as flexibly as possible.
• Agreed that young people could use their funds in different ways to better support them during disruption to services.
• Extended our grant periods to allow young people additional time to complete their goals.
• Supported young people to apply during lockdown by using a variety of means, including video calling.
• Provided young people who were digitally isolated with basic IT equipment to allow them to stay connected to friends, relatives and professional workers that were important to them.

5.3 2015 Fund Engagement

We engaged with disabled recipients and their representatives via our Recipient Advisory Group in Scotland and our Stakeholder Group in Northern Ireland. We successfully recruited more disabled recipients and their representatives to this group and members:

• Directly input to a review of our 2015 published policies. For example, members wanted greater flexibility for ILF Scotland recipients to choose how they might use their funding so we revised our policies to offer increased flexibility, choice and control and to better align with the principles of Self-Directed Support. They told us they needed more advice about employing their Personal Assistants and acting in the role of Award Manager so we produced a revised ‘Employer Support Information Note’, ‘Self-Employed Factsheet’ and ‘Your Responsibilities Guide’.
• Co-produced our Action Plan for 2021-22, which sets out how we will achieve our ‘Charter for Involvement’ commitments, leading to increased involvement of members in our work.
• Directly contributed to our PR and communications campaigns and have been involved in ongoing discussions about the possibility of the re-opening of the 2015 Fund in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
• We will encourage our fund recipients to engage with relevant advocacy and disabled peoples’ organisations to help support them to develop their skills and knowledge and to manage their ILF Scotland award to achieve the best possible independent living outcomes.

5.4 Transition Fund Engagement

We had a busy year, making full use of online facilities to maximise the reach to disabled young people
across Scotland. We:

• Delivered 52 presentations to organisations that support young disabled people with a total of around 600 attendees.
• Targeted young people in the areas highlighted by SIMD as those most in need and furthest from support to apply to and benefit from the fund.
• Targeted areas where the level of applications to the Fund were below that expected per head of population.
• Made significant progress against our Corporate Parenting Plan actions as part of our Transition Fund management, directed at care-experienced young people, many of whom also have a disability or impairment. We specifically targeted organisations working with care experienced young people to raise awareness of the Transition Fund and the relevance to this marginalised group.
• We continued to strengthen and further develop our joint working with the Young Ambassadors, a group of disabled young people who have received grants from the Transition Fund. We recruited additional members to the group and engaged with our Young Ambassadors in a number of areas during 2021-22, where they supported us by:
  
  • Contributing to ILF Scotland’s PR and communications campaigns (they were directly involved in three campaigns over the last year).
  • Participating in ILF Scotland’s online events to help promote the Transition Fund.
  • Establishing regular online meetings to discuss future engagement and co-production work.
  • Providing and collating feedback on any changes to the operation and communication of the Transition Fund for other young people.
  • Providing advice and input into areas of digital communication and accessibility for ILF Scotland’s IT and Digital Team and the wider Scottish Government User Accessibility Team.
  • Providing feedback to help us develop our approach to reporting on gender equality information.

6. Our Staff

At ILF Scotland we work hard to promote an inclusive and respectful culture, where all voices are heard and valued. To continue to highlight our equality duty responsibilities, during 2021-22, we:

• Delivered regular, compulsory, equality and diversity training to all staff with a particular focus on disability.
• Included equality and diversity training in our Induction pack.
• Trained all staff on unconscious / conscious bias across the nine protected characteristics on a regular basis. We believe that we all have unconscious bias and we must tackle this across our workplace to ensure equality and diversity.
• Continued to carry out Equality Impact Assessments (EQIAs) when we developed external policies and worked towards extending EQIAs across our internal polices, plans and projects as well. We raised awareness across the organisation of our impact assessment tool and screening assessment plan and provided management with training on Equality Impact Assessments.
• Developed our equality policies further, to ensure we treat everyone fairly in all day-to-day activities and work related decisions (recruitment, promotion, allocating work, pay, etc.) We have embraced people’s differences, as a more diverse workforce is more productive too, but we know we can do more.
• Proactively invited applications from a diverse cohort of candidates. ILF Scotland believes the more diverse our workforce, the better the decision-making, taking into account a diverse range of ideas and cultures.
• Actively recruited disabled members of staff.
• Engaged our legal advisors, when appropriate, for sound advice on complex, work related, equality and diversity issues.
• Reported on any equality duties at our management meetings as a standing agenda item.
• Engaged with Public and Commercial Services (PCS) Union about new initiatives aimed at proactively addressing Equality and Diversity in our workplace.
• Continued to distribute internal newsletters to staff to ensure that they were fully up to date with
  any organisational policy and business updates.
• Enabled and empowered the voice of our employees through employee engagement surveys.

In 2021-22, we continued to experience the effect of COVID-19, which meant the continuation of home working and virtual meetings.

Some of our colleagues found the ongoing situation extremely challenging and so we continued to focus on protecting the mental health and wellbeing of our staff, introducing further initiatives and encouraging colleagues to talk openly about health and well-being. Colleagues continue to embrace all of this wholeheartedly and provide excellent peer support to the best of their abilities. To help address this, we:

• Provided our staff with a wide range of mental health and resilience training and support and trained members of staff to become internal mental health first aiders.
• Continued to encourage staff to take a half-hour each week for personal wellness.

7. Report on Progress against Outcomes 2021 - 2022

Outcome 1:

ILF Scotland’s activities are informed by a proactive approach to mainstreaming equalities, based on a programme of continuous improvement and co-production both internally and externally.

Outcome 2:

ILF Scotland’s workforce is representative of the community we serve, and is well informed and empowered to support the organisation achieve its mainstreaming equalities responsibilities, which are
embedded into the heart of everything we do.

Outcome 3:

We are accessible to all people who have protected characteristics, and everyone that we engage with finds us to be an open and welcoming organisation.

Outcome 4:

The recipient profile of ILF Scotland’s Transition Fund reflects Scotland’s diverse population and in particular those who have protected characteristics.

We made good progress in delivering our 2021-22 Action Plan aimed at achieving these outcomes. However, the impact of COVID-19 has continued to challenge our ability to maintain progress in mainstreaming equalities and we have yet to achieve all of our stated outcomes with some actions only partially complete or delayed. Appendix 1 to this report provides the detail of this. We have included those outcomes yet to be fully achieved along with associated actions in our Action Plan for 2022-24, detailed in section 8, below.

In evaluating our progress, we recognise that we still have much to do and we will continue to upskill our staff, listen to the diversity of community voices across Scotland, and explore how we can best deliver our services in a way that impacts positively on people with protected characteristics.

As we resume our standard operations, including restarting our review visits and staff returning to the office after COVID-19 restrictions are lifted, we will focus on re-imagining our services to our recipients. We will also focus on employee wellbeing, and our ability to continuously improve our services to disabled people in Scotland.

8. Equality Outcomes 2022 - 2023

Our Equality Outcomes, which will be integrated into our business plan for the next year are:

Outcome 1

Equality Impact Assessment is consistently applied across the organisation.

Action: Further embed the use of Equality Impact Screening and Assessment Practices across all business functions by providing additional awareness and practice training to Managers by the end of Q2 and again by the end of Q4 in 2022-23.

Outcome 2

The Transition Fund has an appropriate reach across all eligible disabled young people in Scotland.

Action: Continue work to analyse the reach of the Transition Fund during 2022-23 across all protected characteristics and taking account of poverty and geography so that by the end of 2024 we can confidently say that we reach all eligible young people in Scotland that require assistance in their transition, engaging with groups of young disabled people with protected characteristics that are under represented.

Outcome 3

Our services are targeted and appropriately tailored to our customers with one or more protected characteristics, taking account of those from a disadvantaged socio-economic background.

Action: Develop comprehensive customer feedback mechanisms to capture information about people who access our services who have multiple characteristics under the Equalities Act and include those people who experience poverty and work with them / representative parties to better target and tailor our services by the end of 2023.

Outcome 4

We provide comprehensive monitoring and reporting on protected characteristics in line with good practice guidance.

Action: Amend our forms and systems to provide better equalities monitoring information on protected characteristics across both funds to improve our monitoring and reporting practices, taking account of any revised guidance from Scottish Government following the recent consultation by the end of 2024.

Outcome 5

Our Communications Strategy appropriately reaches those people with protected characteristics and commits to ensuring improved access across our services and information.

Action: Complete the Communications Strategy to include appropriate commitments in Q2 2022/23 and publish this by Q3.

Outcome 6

We work with, learn from and benchmark with similar public authorities to help us to promote equalities in a wider context.

Action: Reach out to and engage regularly with relevant public bodies to improve the reach of our equalities actions by the end of 2023.

Outcome 7

Our workforce is diverse and representative of the communities we serve.

Action: Develop additional HR initiatives to ensure the representativeness and diversity of our workforce by the end of 2024.

Outcome 8

Colleagues will be supported in the event that personal circumstances, impairment, or a long-term health condition means they require adjustments to their work or workplace.

Action: Introduce a voluntary Employee Passport Scheme to the ILF Scotland workforce by the end of Q2 2022 / 23. (An employee passport provides a framework for the workforce to have a discussion with line managers to discuss personal circumstances, disabilities, long term health conditions which may impact our work at some point in our careers and agree any adjustments which may be needed)

These outcomes will guide our progress and direction. Our Equalities Committee will review progress at each quarterly meeting to ensure we remain on track. We will update them as required in response to progress or any relevant unplanned and unforeseen national and international events. We will report against or progress in 12 months to our Board and publish a revised Outcomes Report at the end of 2024.

We have set ambitious equality outcomes with the intention that we embed equality, diversity and inclusion into our strategic and annual delivery plans. Our Senior Management Team shares responsibility for promoting and embedding equality in our plans, projects and operations processes.

Our Board approved our equalities outcomes and Board members understand that the Board is responsible for providing the necessary scrutiny to ensure that we meet our duties and consider potential equality impacts as part of our corporate decision-making.

Like other Non Departmental Public Bodies, we adjusted our planning and operations in response to the impact of COVID-19 and as we move into the planning and delivery of operations for 2022 - 24, we will prioritise delivery actions that are realistic and proportionate in the current financial climate and in our business recovery and resumption from COVID-19.

9. Board Diversity Duty

The Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act 2018 sets an objective for public boards that they have 50% of non-executive members who are women. ILF Scotland has worked proactively with the Scottish Government for a number of years to improve the diversity and gender balance of the ILF Scotland Board.

We have achieved greater than 50% female representation on our non-executive Board since 2015 and have sustained this position through to 2022, with 57% of board members being female.

We measure the representativeness of our Board on an ongoing basis. We conducted an equality monitoring exercise with our Board and workforce in 2021, which has informed our future recruitment planning to ensure an even more diverse and equitable Board.

Ethnicity is currently under-represented on our Board. We plan to address this through future recruitment campaigns by working closely with the Public Appointments Team through Scottish Government.

ILF Scotland currently follows The Equalities and Human Rights Commission six-step good practice guide. https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/how-improve-board-diversity-six-step-guide-good-practice

2020: 3 men, 4 women
2021: 3 men, 4 women
2022: 3 men, 4 women

10. Employee Information

We used data capture and analysis to measure the representativeness of our workforce profile and use this information to identify improvement measures such as targeted recruitment. Our workforce monitoring data indicates that we are predominantly a white and able-bodied organisation. Our organisational demography by the end of Q4 2021-22 is staff (66) and Directors (7).

Women are well represented in the general workforce and at managerial level - 74%:26% female:male. Women are under-represented at Director / Senior Management Team Level. We plan to address this through leadership/management development, succession planning and future recruitment to senior posts.

We have a good representation of disability – 20.54% self-identified as disabled. As a comparison, in December 2021 the Scottish Government reported 8.7%.

We have some representation of black and minority ethnicity - 4.10% BAME, a small decrease from our previous representation of 4.92%. In December 2021, the Scottish Government reported a figure of 2.8%.

The information we have on sexual orientation is that 1.36% of staff identify as LGBT. In December 2021, the Scottish Government reported a figure of 5.4%.

As a positive action measure in recruitment, we ask on all adverts for applicants with protected characteristics to apply for job vacancies. We are not alone in trying to meet the challenge of a representative workforce and this will continue to be a key focus of activity for next year.

The findings from our 2021 employee engagement surveys indicate (93% response rate):

• 100% of our staff continue to work flexibly and can work remotely.
• Life/Balance Opportunities - 98% were in control at very least ‘most of the time’.
• Staff members welcome and use the Wellbeing ½ hour – 66.7%.
• 100% of our staff who responded stated that ILF Scotland is a good employer.

11. Equal Paygap Information

We report our pay gaps using a single measure, by comparing the average full-time equivalent earnings in 2021-22 by gender. For example, the full-time gender pay gap compares the mean and median hourly pay, excluding overtime, of men and women. It is important to note that a pay gap does not necessarily mean a difference in pay for comparable jobs or work of equal value.

Gender Pay Gap by Grade

	Grade	Women’s pay as a % of men’s pay	Median Pay Gap	Mean Pay Gap
Administration	A3	100%	0%	0%
Specialist Professional and Technical	B1	93.01%	6.98%	6%
Specialist Professional and Technical	B2	106.73%	-6.92%	-6.76%
Specialist Professional and Technical	B3	99.04%	0%	3.21%
SMT	C1	86.01%	13.98%	13.98%
SMT	C2	100%	0%	0%
SMT	C3	N/A	0%	0%
CEO	SCS1	N/A	0%	0%

All comparable jobs or work of equal value are paid on the same scale. The pay gap in 2021 is entirely due to spinal placement on the grade and will even out as employees reach the top of their scale.

Employee Profiles 2021

Full & Part Time M/F

• Female Employees – 75.75%
• Male Employees – 24.25%

Staff (M/F)

• Female Full Time – 32
• Male Full Time – 13
• Female Part Time – 18
• Male Part Time – 3

Employee profile commentary

• Part time working pattern is slightly predominate toward women.
• During 2021 a survey explored blended working as part of our COVID-19 recovery plan. This informed the introduction of our hybrid working principles with 92 % of staff wanting choice and control over whether working in the office or at home. 6% indicated a preference to work full time in the office with 2% wishing to work permanently from home.

Employee profile actions to consider

• Share this data with our staff group.

12. Equal Pay Settlement

The Equal Pay Statement outlines ILF Scotland’s support for the principle of equal opportunities in employment.

ILF Scotland is committed to the principles of equality of opportunity in employment and believes that staff should receive equal pay for the same or broadly similar work, or work rated as equivalent and for work of equal value. This will be regardless of their age, disability, ethnicity or race, gender reassignment, marital or civil partnership status, pregnancy, political beliefs, religion or belief, sex or sexual orientation.

To achieve this, we will operate pay systems that are transparent, based on objective criteria and free from unlawful bias.

13. Recruitment and Employment Practices

We will use the information in this report to support and inform our recruitment and employment practice to improve our workforce equality and diversity.

Data on the current workforce within ILF Scotland is robust in terms of age and sex. Data on the protected characteristics of ethnicity, disability, religion and belief, sexual orientation and gender reassignment continues to be limited due to the numbers of staff leaving questions unanswered or stating they would prefer not to answer. Work continues to increase awareness throughout our workforce to the benefits of disclosing protected characteristic data as well as reassuring staff that this information is confidential.

The accuracy of our equality profile data is important as it can assist our Board and SMT to plan the workforce of the future and provides justification for allowable positive action to make improvements leading to a workforce that reflects the population and geographical locations we work in.

As a Public Body, we aspire to work firstly in partnership with the Scottish Government and other Public Bodies. It will be increasingly important for us to continue to work in partnership as we promote the Independent Living Fund Scotland as an employer of choice as we continue to support disabled people in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Appendix 1

Progress against Outcomes 2021 - 2022

Objective: ILF Scotland’s activities are informed by a proactive approach to mainstreaming equalities, based on a programme of continuous improvement and co-production, internally and externally.

Action: Set up an Equality and Diversity Committee by the end of Q2 to benchmark ILF Scotland against comparable organisations and identify areas for improvement by the end of Q4.
Complete. Our Equality and Diversity Committee has informed our annual staff survey, and our recruitment and succession plans with work continuing to ensure our programme of learning and development offers equal opportunity.

Action: Embed an EQIA prompt in our project planning tool in Q1 to assist with EQIA awareness. Complete

Action: Continue to raise awareness from Q1, across the organisation, of our impact assessment tool and screening assessment plan to embed this further, which will enable us to apply good equality practice across the organisation. Partially Complete

Action: Provide further staff training to Managers during 2022/23 to encourage good practice in equalities and the mainstreaming of equalities across all business functions and staff teams. Partially Complete

Action: Management Team Awareness raising held in November 2021. Complete

Objective: We have improved our ongoing service delivery in response to feedback from the COVID-19 recipient feedback survey.

Action: Draw up an action plan following the analysis of the recipient feedback survey responses in Q1 and implement these in Q2. Complete

Objective: We have taken positive action to improve the diversity of our workforce to ensure that it is representative of the community we serve.

Action: We will use our diversity profile to inform recruitment campaigns during 2021/22 to identify potential for positive targeted action and monitor any resultant change / success at the end of Q4.
Partially Complete. Equalities elements included in recruitment campaigns from job advert stage. Further development work required.

Action: Our Equality and Diversity Committee will inform our annual staff survey, our programme of learning and development, and our recruitment and succession plans and will be in a position to report on these at the end of Q4. Complete

Objective: We are accessible to all people who have protected characteristics, and everyone that we engage with finds us to be an open and welcoming organisation.

Action: We will produce a Communications Strategy by the end of Q2, which will set out how we will specifically target people who have protected characteristics with our communications over Q3 and Q4.
Partially Complete. Communication Strategy production delayed. Rescheduled for Q2 2022-23. We are developing our Communications Strategy to specifically target people who have protected characteristics.
Short life working group to assess accessibility of publications established. Further development work required. We have staff booked onto courses in Easy Read with a view to creating, updating and publishing additional key policies and documents, including our Privacy Notice in accessible formats.

Objective: The recipient profile of ILF Scotland’s Transition Fund reflects Scotland’s diverse population and in particular those young disabled people who have protected characteristics.

Action: We will work to gain a better understanding of the profile of our Transition Fund recipient base during Q2 and Q3 and will develop responses to address any under-representation from Q4 onwards. Complete

Action: Targeted work in key geographical areas of recognised deprivation and underrepresentation and with corporate partners within these areas to help increase uptake in applications from groups that are traditionally more difficult to engage with.
In Q3 and Q4, we will identify community partners / groups that can help us access different cohorts of young disabled people who might benefit from the Fund.
Complete. Targeted work within the deaf community. Commenced work on the Corporate Parenting Action Plan drawing in CAHMS & care-experienced young people and young people with mental health impairments.

Objective: Our staff will be supported to work flexible hours and in flexible ways including working from home that suits individuals and allows them to achieve a good home life and work balance.

Action: We issued a survey in Q2 to explore ‘blended working’ as we plan our COVID-19 recovery journey and use this to inform our strategic planning. Complete

Objective: We work with our partners to support and promote equalities in a wider context and learn from and benchmark with other public authorities.

Action: Engage with Equality and Diversity leads in the Scottish Government and identify other NDPBs that we can work collaboratively with to improve our equality and diversity initiatives and evidence of mainstreaming equality and improving diversity.
Partially Complete. Equality and Diversity leads contacted and list of benchmark organisations compiled. Further development work required.

Objective: Our Stakeholder Group in Northern Ireland is more representative of the recipients of our 2015 Fund.

Action: Undertake awareness raising and recruitment exercise in Q3 to encourage more disabled ILF Scotland recipients to be active members of the NI Stakeholder Group. Complete.

Contact us

ILF Scotland
Ground Floor, Denholm House,
Almondvale Business Park,
Almondvale Way,
Livingston,
EH54 6GA
Telephone: 0300 200 2022
Email: enquiries@ILF.scot

If you need this document in an alternative format, please contact us.

Foreword

We are pleased to introduce ILF Scotland’s first Mainstreaming and Equalities Outcome Report, which outlines how we will work to deliver our equalities duties and achieve our vision that all disabled people, and those with a long-term health condition, can access what they need to lead an independent life. Our Strategic Plan 2020-23 ‘Hope & Ambition’ and our suite of policies demonstrate our commitment to promoting equality.

This document highlights the progress we have made in delivering our 2020-21 equalities outcomes. It also sets out our equalities’ outcomes for 2021-22 and the actions we will take to achieve them. We aim to review our progress and planning relating to equalities on an annual basis.

We became a Non Departmental Public Body (NDPB) in 2018 and since then, there have been changes to the wider equalities context in which we work. For example:

• Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act 2018
• Civil Partnership (Scotland) Act 2020.
• The need for ongoing employer action to create workplaces that are more representative.
• The #MeToo movement highlighting the impact in the workplace of inappropriate sexual abuse and sexist attitudes and behaviours.
• The #Black Lives Matter movement highlighting deeply entrenched racial inequalities in society.
• The LGBT+ and PRIDE movement highlighting the inequalities experienced by this particular community in society.
• The increase in awareness of the United Nations Day of Persons of Disabilities shining a light on the inequalities and discrimination faced by disabled people internationally.

COVID-19 has shone a light on some of the social and economic inequalities within our nation and our communities. Evidence exists to show how the pandemic is disproportionately affecting people with protected characteristics, including on their socio-economic status and access to services. In addition, we know that there has been a resulting increase in mental health issues across all age groups, but particularly in the older and younger population who are experiencing significant feelings of loneliness and isolation. These issues directly affected a number of our recipients in both our 2015 and Transition Funds.

As an organisation, we continuously strive to play our part in the wider equalities agenda and to improve our performance in relation to equalities across every part of our business. While we have made progress, we are far from complacent and we know there is more we can do. We aim to continuously improve our equality outcomes and strengthen our approach and evidence how we work with our partners to support and promote equalities in a wider context.

As a fair work organisation working with disabled people, we regularly review our working practices to ensure that equality, diversity and inclusion are at the centre of our decision-making. Our Board and staff group are diverse and well informed and we will continue with this working strategy as we move through this pandemic and beyond.

In this report, we set out our equality focus for the next year.

Susan Douglas Scott CBE
ILF Scotland Board Chair

Peter Scott OBE
ILF Scotland CEO

1. About Us

ILF Scotland is a Non Departmental Public Body (NDPB), governed by a Board of Directors, appointed by and accountable to Scottish Ministers. ILF Scotland operates as a discretionary fund providing financial awards to approximately 4,000 disabled people in Scotland and Northern Ireland to help them live independently. This funding enables individuals to pay for support so that they can live with control, choice and dignity in their homes and within their local communities. This includes the 2015 Fund, which provides a regular 4-weekly independent living payment and the Transition Fund for 16-25 year-olds, providing grants, young disabled people.

ILF Scotland employs 54 people:

• A team of 4 in Northern Ireland & a team of 50 in Scotland
• Made up of 30 support staff in the Livingston office and 24 home-based assessors

We actively recruit colleagues with disabilities and long-term health conditions. In addition, we have:

• 7 board members, 4 of whom identify as disabled (57%)

2. Introduction

This is our first Equalities, Outcomes and Mainstreaming Report. It reports on our progress against our equalities outcomes for the period 2020 to 2021, shows our commitment to equality as a provider of public services and as an employer, and confirms our equality outcomes and actions for 2021-22.

3. Legal Framework

The Equality Act 2010 sets out the ‘general equality duty’ for all public authorities to have due regard to the need to:

• Eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation and other prohibited conduct.
• Advance equality of opportunity between people who share a relevant protected characteristic and those who do not, particularly by removing or minimising disadvantage; meeting the needs of particular groups that are different from the needs of others; and encouraging participation in public life.
• Foster good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not.

The Equality Act 2010 also lists nine protected characteristics and defines direct and indirect discrimination as:

“Where someone is treated less favourably according to a protected characteristic or could be disadvantaged compared to someone who does not share that protected characteristic.”

The protected characteristics are Age; Disability; Gender reassignment; Marriage and Civil Partnership; Pregnancy and Maternity; Race; Religion or belief; Sex; and Sexual Orientation.

All people are entitled to equal treatment and the way in which people are treated shapes their lives and lived experiences. It is important that we recognise and understand how unequal treatment under each characteristic impacts on people and particularly those who are living with more than one or multiple protected characteristics.

ILF Scotland must comply with the Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties) (Scotland) Regulations 2012 and the specific duties designed to help Scottish public authorities meet the general duty. Regulation 4 of the specific equality duties requires that we base our Equality Outcomes on evidence, and involvement of equality groups.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) regulate performance against equalities duties. From April 2020, ILF Scotland is required to report on the areas outlined below, every two years, apart from the Statement on Equal Pay, which is every four years. We also have a duty to publish diversity information about our board members.

This report meets our general and specific duties under the Equality Act 2010 and outlines:

• Mainstreaming the Equality Duty in ILF Scotland
• Report on Progress
• Board Diversity Duty
• Employee Information
• Gender Pay Gap Information
• Statement on Equal Pay (covering sex only)

4. Mainstreaming the Equality Duty in ILF Scotland

Introduction

Mainstreaming equality and diversity is a long-term, strategic approach to ensure that equality, diversity, and inclusion sit at the heart of organisational culture and strategic and operational delivery. It takes time and resources to develop this properly and it needs the commitment, encouragement and support of our Board and our senior management team to make sure that every member of our staff understands, accepts, and embraces equalities across every part of our organisation and in the services we deliver to our recipients. We believe that mainstreaming equality has many benefits including helping us to:

• Put equality at the heart of everything we do.
• Embrace diversity across our organisation and attract and retain a motivated workforce, rich in talent, skills and experiences.
• Continually improve our service delivery and make sure our services meet the diverse needs of our recipients.
• Help us to be more socially inclusive and engage better with those most excluded from society.
• Improve our performance.
• Help us to deliver our Strategic Plan ‘Hope & Ambition’ and our associated Delivery Plan.

Compared to some other public bodies, in terms of reporting on outcomes and delivering on equality plans, we are at the early stages of our equality journey. However, we strongly embrace our equalities commitment and work hard to implement the principles of equality and believe we have been successful in this endeavour. We are keen to learn from our achievements and continuously improve our performance in this area. So far, we have delivered various initiatives aimed at improving and mainstreaming equalities. In particular, we strategically place staff well-being, equality, diversity and inclusion, flexibility and development at the heart of our business strategy.

These are some examples of the progress we have made to make the equality duty integral to the exercise of our functions since 2020:

• In February 2021, we provided an update to Scottish Government on the work ILF Scotland has carried out to address Race Equality, Employment and Skills in the workplace.
• We published an annual Equality Duty Action Plan on our website.
• Promoted an inclusive and respectful culture, where all voices are heard and valued.
• Delivered regular, compulsory, equality and diversity training to all staff with a particular focus on disabilities.
• Provided our staff with a wide range of mental health and resilience training and support and trained four members of staff to become internal mental health first aiders.
• Introduced a half-hour each week for staff to use for personal wellness.
• Introduced a menopause policy.
• Enabled and empowered the voice of our employees through employee engagement surveys.
• Actively recruited disabled members of staff and recruited a disabled young person as an Intern.
• Encouraged more disabled people to join our Scotland Recipient Advisory Group.
• Developed the ‘Charter for Involvement’ to give disabled people greater involvement in things that are important to them in the delivery of our services.
• Developed the Young Ambassadors Group of disabled young people who have received grants from the Transition Fund.
• Delivered presentations to organisations who support disabled people.
• Carried out an exercise to contact our recipients from minority groups to check on their wellbeing.
• Developed an action plan in preparation for developing our Gaelic Language Plan.
• Produced our first Corporate Parenting Plan directed at care experienced young people, many of whom also have a disability or impairment.
• Directly involved our recipients, Scotland Advisory Group members, Northern Ireland Stakeholder Group members and our Transition Fund Young Ambassador Group members in our PR and Communication campaigns.

We wish to contribute positively toward achieving an equal, inclusive and just society. We aim to work in partnership with the Scottish Government and other organisations to do this. We commit to continuing to embed good practice in equalities at a strategic and operational level. In particular, we will continue to aim for greater diversity in our workforce and learn from and benchmark with other public authorities. We will commit to embedding equality further within our strategic and operational activities.

5. Report on Progress 2020 – 2021

COVID–19 has exacerbated social inequalities and research has shown that some groups e.g. older people, disabled people and people in black and ethnic minority groups are at risk of higher exposure and unfavourable outcomes from infection. The impact of low income, reduced access to services, geographic location (urban and rural) and lack of green space have all served to reveal the disparities across different communities. The economic impact on people’s livelihoods and the anxiety from this have combined like never before to highlight the different lived experiences across Scotland during this pandemic.

Many groups found themselves isolated due to other health conditions and disabilities and were required to ‘shield.’ Young people found the isolation hard to bear and this had an impact on their health and wellbeing. People belonging to Black and Asian communities experienced anxiety because of the spotlight on negative outcomes from infection. We report on our progress within this context.

Our Recipients

Our recipients of both funds are disabled people. Our funding helps our recipients to access the same opportunities as others and achieve their personal independent living outcomes. We continuously review our strategies, plans, policies and practice to provide the best service we can.

We conducted a survey to find out how our disabled recipients and their support services had been affected by COVID-19, if they thought they would need to make any changes to their support and what they thought ILF Scotland could have done better or that it might do differently as we come out of the pandemic.

Summary of Survey Responses

The responses show that the pandemic has severely affected our recipients. The key themes are:

• The severity of the negative impact on peoples’ mental and physical Health.
• More than 20% of respondents have felt isolated in their own homes. Not being able to see family and friends has left many feeling emotional, tired and worried with a sense of hopelessness for the future.
• Many of those shielding have developed severe anxiety and fear about returning to the outside world.
• The loss of day services has caused a loss of routine for many, which has led to anxiety, stress and in some cases self-harming.
• Family carers are feeling exhausted and in critical need of further support; currently unavailable due to provider services being withdrawn. Many are at breaking point mentally and physically.
• The loss of family respite services has put an enormous strain on relationships.
• Many have had to take unpaid leave from work and in some instances leave a job to provide full time care and have relied heavily on ILF Scotland funding.
• The withdrawal of services has caused anxiety for young people who can no longer participate in their community. The ILF Scotland Transition Fund recipients reported that this has been a huge support and help to young people aged 16-25, made even more important because of the lack of traditional transition planning happening due to lockdown. It has helped them to look ahead at gaining opportunities and developing their skills as they move in to adult life.

The overriding response is that recipients are grateful to ILF Scotland’s approach during the pandemic. The flexible policy changes in funding has provided a massive help to families, in particular to those who have had to take unpaid leave or who have had to give up their jobs to provide full time care in the absence of other services. Recipients and their families really valued the welfare calls from assessors, commenting on the care and attention they were offered and on the support and understanding from our casework team taking their calls.

2015 Fund

Engagement

We engaged with disabled recipients and their representatives via our Recipient Advisory Group in Scotland and our Stakeholder Group in Northern Ireland.

These Group members have:

• Helped shape our 2020-23 Strategic Plan.
• Directly input to a review of our 2015 published policies. For example, members wanted greater flexibility for ILF Scotland recipients to choose how they might use their funding so we revised our policy to offer increased flexibility, choice and control and to better align with the principles of Self- Directed Support. They told us they needed more advice about employing their Personal Assistants and acting in the role of Award Manager so we produced a revised ‘Employer Support Information Note’, and ‘Your Responsibilities Guide’.
• Co-produced our Action Plan for 2021-22, which sets out how we will achieve our ‘Charter for Involvement’ commitments.
• Directly contributed to our PR and communications campaigns this year, namely our 5th birthday celebrations.
• Been involved in the online consultation to gather views on the potential re-opening of the 2015 Fund in Northern Ireland (Northern Ireland Stakeholder Group members).

COVID-19

• We applied our policies as flexibly as possible throughout 2020- 2021 to support our disabled recipients to continue to live independently at home.
• We published guidance on our website and social media channels, issued several individual letters to recipients, wrote to service providers, payroll agencies and financial management organisations and issued external newsletters to keep our recipients and other stakeholders up to date with current Scottish Government, NHS and ILF Scotland’s policy response to the pandemic.
• We carried out over 4,200 welfare and wellbeing calls providing support and guidance to our recipients during the pandemic and lockdown from March 2020 – March 2021.
• We paid out £860,000 in additional funding to pay for replacement support where normal support services could not be provided. We helped pay for additional COVID-19 related expenditure such as PPE equipment, travel, etc.
• We provided funding for carer respite in exceptional circumstances to avoid the collapse of care and the potential for our recipient to have to go into a care home or hospital.

Transition Fund

Engagement

We engaged with our Transition Fund Young Ambassadors Group in the last year in a number of areas and they have supported us by:

• Contributing to ILF Scotland’s PR and communications campaigns (they were directly involved in three campaigns over the last year).
• Recruiting new members to the Young Ambassador Group.
• Supporting ILF Scotland’s Events and Engagement Officer with online events to help promote the Transition Fund.
• Establishing regular online meetings to discuss future engagement and co-production work.
• Providing and collating feedback on any changes to the operation and communication of the Transition Fund for other young people.
• Providing advice and input into areas of digital communication and accessibility for ILF Scotland’s IT and Digital Team and the wider Scottish Government User Accessibility Team.

COVID-19

Young people and disabled people are among those groups most affected by the restrictions of COVID-19. A great number of disabled people have experienced a very difficult year with many reporting on the negative impact of the lockdown on their mental health. They have been socially isolated and unable to attend college, volunteering activities, day centres, gyms, etc. Young people leaving school have also experienced a lack of traditional transition support.

We remained open to applications right through 2020-21 when other forms of support were not available to young people and to help our applicants and recipients, we:

• Applied our Transition Fund policies as flexibly as possible.
• Agreed that young people could use their funds in different ways to better support them during disruption to services.
• Extended our grant periods to allow young people additional time to complete their goals.
• Targeted young people in the areas highlighted by SIMD as those most in need and furthest from support to apply to and benefit from the fund.
• Supported young people to apply during lockdown by using a variety of means, including video calling.
• Provided young people who were digitally isolated with basic IT equipment to allow them to stay connected to friends, relatives and professional workers that were important to them.

Our Staff

2020-21 has been a year like no other and many of us have found ourselves living and working in quite different ways because of COVID–19. Many of our employees found themselves thrust into the virtual world and working from home. Fortunately, a number of our staff already worked flexibly so most were able to adjust well to this.

However, some of our colleagues have found it very challenging, and we were concerned about protecting the mental health and wellbeing of our staff, so we focused on this and introduced a number of initiatives. We have tried to create a change in culture, encouraging colleagues to talk more openly about health and well-being.

We introduced a range of supports for mental health and wellbeing and made sure that people knew about these. Colleagues embraced all of this wholeheartedly and provided peer support to the best of their abilities throughout this difficult period. The following lists the action we have taken in the last year:

• We trained all staff on unconscious / conscious bias across the nine protected characteristics on a regular basis. We believe that we all have unconscious bias and we must tackle this across our workplace to ensure equality and diversity.
• We developed our equality policies further, to ensure we treat everyone fairly in all day- to-day activities and work related decisions (recruitment, promotion, allocating work, pay, etc.) We embrace people’s differences, as a more diverse workforce is more productive too, but we know we can do more.
• We proactively invited applications from a diverse cohort of candidates. ILF Scotland believes the more diverse our workforce, the better the decision-making, taking into account a diverse range of ideas and cultures.
• We engaged our legal advisors, when appropriate, for sound advice on complex, work related, equality and diversity issues.
• We reported on any equality duties at our management meetings as a standing agenda item.
• We engaged with PCS Union about new initiatives aimed at proactively addressing Equality and Diversity in our workplace.
• As we move through the COVID-19 pandemic, our plan is to continue with our current work to address Equality and Diversity and consider new ways to making our workplace equal.

Communications

• We ensure that all our communications are free from discriminatory and unacceptable language.
• We make our documents available in a range of alternative languages and accessible formats, including ‘easy read’.
• We ensure that we co-produce any documents, marketing materials and letters as much and as often as we can with our recipients, Transition Fund Ambassadors, Scotland Recipient Advisory Group and Northern Ireland Stakeholder Group members.
• We distributed two newsletters and three letters and mailouts (for those who communicate with us online) to provide COVID-19 policy and operational updates and information.
• The Communications Team updated ILF Scotland’s website regularly (daily, weekly and monthly depending on what the policy position was) and the organisation’s social media daily to ensure all stakeholders were informed of the COVID-19 policy position and operational guidance.
• The Communications Team directly involved recipients to share their experiences during the pandemic for PR and communications campaigns to highlight to the wider community and stakeholders about the impact of COVID-19 on disabled people.
• We surveyed our recipients to gauge the impact of the pandemic on their lives.
• We issued extensive guidance to staff so that they could confidently provide advice on our policy approach to our recipients and signpost them to other relevant sources of support.
• We issued weekly communication updates to staff about COVID-19 and other business updates so that staff did not feel over-burdened with vast amounts of emails.
• We also distributed an initial bi-weekly and then a monthly internal newsletter to staff to ensure that they were fully up to date with any organisational policy and business updates, in addition to the weekly email communication.

Equality Assessment

We have proactively used Equality legislation to shape our policies for disabled people and people with other protected characteristics ensuring a Human Rights and Equality based approach to all of our policies. We consider the impact of any new policies or any changes to policies on our disabled recipients or on disabled young people in our communities who might be eligible to apply to the Transition Fund.

We carry out Equality Impact Assessments (EQIAs) when we develop our policies and publish these on our website, where appropriate. We are in the final stages of completing a review of all of our policies and Equality Impact Assessments have featured at the beginning, during and at the end of this process.

We have been working to extend EQIA assessments across our internal plans, projects and practices. We have raised awareness across the organisation of our impact assessment tool and screening assessment plan to embed this further in future, which will enable us to apply good equality practice across the organisation.

We will provide further staff training to Managers during 2021/22 to encourage good practice in equalities and the mainstreaming of equalities across all business functions and staff teams.

Our Partners

Key partners in our approach to equality include the Scottish Government and NDPB HR network and forum where core Scottish Government and other Public Bodies share best practice discussing equality and diversity policy and practice.

We are keen to expand and improve on our approach to working in partnership with others on equality as this will be valuable for shared learning and has the potential to act as a critical friend to our activity and projects on race and disability.

Conclusion

The impact of COVID–19 has challenged our ability to maintain progress in mainstreaming equalities, but it has also highlighted opportunities in the form of digital development to engage with existing and new audiences. In evaluating our progress, it is important to acknowledge that we still have much to learn. We will do this by upskilling our people and listening to the diversity of community voices across Scotland. We will be open in our decision- making about what we can and cannot do and we will continue to explore the relationship that ILF Scotland has in delivering social care services that impact positively on the lives of disabled people.

As we recover and resume our standard operations including restarting our review visits and staff returning to the office after COVID-19, we are also focusing on re-imagining our services to our recipients, on employee wellbeing, and on our ability to continuously improve.

6. Board Diversity Duty

Board Diversity 2020 The Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act 2018 sets an objective for public boards that they have 50% of non-executive members who are women. ILF Scotland has worked proactively with the Scottish Government for a number of years to improve the diversity and gender balance of the ILF Scotland Board. We have achieved greater than 50% of the women represented on our non- executive Board since 2015 and have sustained this position through to 2021, with 57% of board members being women.

We measure the representativeness of our Board on an ongoing basis and are currently conducting an equality monitoring exercise with our Board and workforce. This will inform the future recruitment planning to ensure an even more diverse and equitable Board.

In 2019, we recruited two new disabled people to our Board as part of a targeted approach to increasing representation from disabled people, which is particularly important to us given our whole existence is about providing services to disabled people. Ethnicity is currently under represented on our Board. We plan to address this through future recruitment campaigns by working closely with the Public Appointments Team through Scottish Government.

ILF Scotland currently follows The Equalities and Human Rights Commission six-step good practice guide. How to improve board diversity: a six step guide to good practice – Equality and Human Rights Commission.

2019: 3 men, 5 women
2020: 3 men, 4 women
2021: 3 men, 4 women

7. Employee Information

We used data capture and analysis to measure the representativeness of our workforce profile and use this information to identify improvement measures such as targeted recruitment. Our workforce monitoring data indicates that we are predominantly a white and able-bodied organisation. Our organisational demography by the end of Q4 2020-21 is staff (54) and Directors (7).

Women are well represented in the general workforce and at managerial level – 72%:28% women:men. Women are under- represented at Director / Senior Management Team Level. We plan to address this through leadership/ management development, succession planning and future recruitment to senior posts.

We have a good representation of disability – 16.39% self-identified as disabled. As a comparison, in December 2020 the Scottish Government reported 8.7%.

We have some representation of black and minority ethnicity – 4.92% BAME, a small increase from our previous representation of 4%.

In December 2020, the Scottish Government reported a figure of 2.5%.

The information we have on sexual orientation is that 1.64% of staff identify as LGBT. In December 2020, the Scottish Government reported a figure of 4.8%.

As a positive action measure in recruitment, we ask on all adverts for applicants with protected characteristics to apply for job vacancies. We are not alone in trying to meet the challenge of a representative workforce – this will be a key focus of activity for next year.

The findings from our 2020 employee engagement surveys indicate (93% response rate):

• 100% of our staff work flexibly and can work remotely. This was true prior to COVID-19.
• Life/Balance Opportunities – 100% were in control at the very least ‘most of the time’.
• Staff members welcome and use the Wellbeing ½ hour – 75.5%.
• 96% of our staff who responded stated that ILF Scotland is a good employer

8. Equality Outcomes 2021 - 2022

Our Equality Outcomes, which will be integrated into our business plan for the next year are:

Outcome  1

ILF Scotland’s activities are informed by a proactive approach to mainstreaming equalities, based on a programme of continuous improvement and co-production both internally and externally.

Actions:

• Set up an Equality and Diversity Committee by the end of quarter 2 to benchmark ILF Scotland against comparable organisations and identify areas for improvement by the end of quarter 4.
• Embed an EQIA prompt in our project planning tool in quarter 1 to assist with EQIA awareness.
• Continue to raise awareness from quarter 1, across the organisation, of our impact assessment tool and screening assessment plan to embed this further, which will enable us to apply good equality practice across the organisation.
• Provide further staff training to Managers during 2021/22 to encourage good practice in equalities and the mainstreaming of equalities across all business functions and staff teams.

Outcome 2

We have improved our ongoing service delivery in response to feedback from the Covid-19 recipient feedback survey.

Actions:

• Draw up an action plan following the analysis of the recipient feedback survey responses in quarter 1 and implement these in quarter 2.

Outcome 3

We have taken positive action to improve the diversity of our workforce to ensure that it is representative of the community we serve.

Actions:

• We will use our diversity profile to inform recruitment campaigns during 2021/22 to identify potential for positive targeted action and monitor any resultant change / success at the end of quarter 4.
• Our Equality and Diversity Committee will inform our annual staff survey, our programme of learning and development, and our recruitment and succession plans and will be in a position to report on these at the end of quarter 4.

Outcome 4

We are accessible to all people who have protected characteristics, and everyone that we engage with finds us to be an open and welcoming organisation.

Actions:

• We will produce a communication strategy by the end of quarter 2, which will set out how we will specifically target people who have protected characteristics with our communications over quarter 3 and 4.
• We will set up an internal working group to identify priority publications for ‘Easy read’ / ‘At a Glance’ productions by quarter 1 and have published all agreed documents by the end of quarter 4.

The recipient profile of ILF Scotland’s Transition Fund reflects Scotland’s diverse population and in particular those young disabled people who have protected characteristics.

Actions:

• We will work to gain a better understanding of the profile of our Transition Fund recipient base during quarter 2 and 3 and will develop responses to address any under-representation from quarter 4 onwards.
• In quarter 3 and 4, we will identify community partners / groups that can help us access different cohorts of young disabled people who might benefit from the Fund.

Outcome 5

Our staff will be supported to work flexible hours and in flexible ways including working from home that suits individuals and allows them to achieve a good home life and work balance.

Actions:

• We will issue a survey in quarter 2 to explore ‘blended working’ as we plan our COVID 19 recovery journey and use this to inform our strategic planning.
• We will share this with the staff group and aim to implement any changes to working practices in quarter 3 and ask for feedback in quarter 4 to measure success.

Outcome 6

We work with our partners to support and promote equalities in a wider context and learn from and benchmark with other public authorities.

Actions:

• Engage with Equality and Diversity leads in the Scottish Government and identify other NDPBs that we can work collaboratively with to improve our equality and diversity initiatives and evidence of mainstreaming equality and improving diversity.

Outcome 7

Our Stakeholder Group in Northern Ireland is more representative of the recipients of our 2015 Fund.

Actions:

• Undertake awareness raising and recruitment exercise in quarter 3 to encourage more disabled ILF Scotland recipients to be active members of the NI Stakeholder Group.

These outcomes will guide our progress and direction and we will review them annually to ensure we remain on track, updating them as required in response to progress or any relevant unplanned and unforeseen national and international events.

We have set ambitious equality outcomes with the intention that we embed equality, diversity and inclusion into our strategic and annual delivery plans. Our Senior Management Team shares responsibility for promoting and embedding equality in our plans, projects and operations processes.

Our Board approved our equalities outcomes and Board members understand that the Board is responsible for providing the necessary scrutiny to ensure that we meet our duties and consider potential equality impacts as part of our corporate decision-making.

Like other non-departmental public bodies, we adjusted our planning and operations in response to the impact of COVID-19 and as we move into the planning and delivery of operations for 2021 - 22, we will prioritise delivery actions that are realistic and proportionate in the current financial climate and our business recovery and resumption from COVID-19.

9. Equal Pay Gap Information

We report our pay gaps using a single measure, by comparing the average full-time earnings in 2021 by gender. For example, the full-time gender pay gap compares the mean and median hourly pay, excluding overtime, of men and women. It is important to note that a pay gap does not necessarily mean a difference in pay for comparable jobs or work of equal value.

Gender Pay Gap by Grade

	Grade	Women’s pay as a % of men’s pay	Median Pay Gap	Mean Pay Gap
Administration	A3	95%	5%	5%
Specialist Professional and Technical	B1 B2 B3	93.87% 96.93% 99.60%	6.98% 0% 0%	6.13% 3.07% 0.40%
SMT	C1 C2 C3	81.14% 100% n/a	18.86% 0% 0%	18.86% 0% 0%
CEO	SCS 1	n/a	0%	0%

Employee Profiles 2021

All Employees

Women: 75%
Men: 25%

Profile of Women

Full-time: 65%
Part-time: 35%

Profile of Men

Full-time: 77%
Part-time: 23%

Employee profile commentary

• Part time working pattern is slightly predominate toward women.
• During 2021, a survey will explore ‘blended working’ in place as we plan our COVID 19 recovery journey. This will be important as the impact of ‘working from home’ influences people’s future choices/preferences.

Employee profile actions to consider

• All recruitment campaigns should be informed by the diversity profile to identify potential for positive targeted action.
• Consider the ‘blended working’ data to inform strategic planning.
• Share this data with our staff group.

10. Equal Pay Statement

The Equal Pay Statement outlines ILF Scotland’s support for the principle of equal opportunities in employment.

ILF Scotland is committed to the principles of equality of opportunity in employment and believes that staff should receive equal pay for the same or broadly similar work, or work rated as equivalent and for work of equal value. This will be regardless of their age, disability, ethnicity or race, gender reassignment, marital or civil partnership status, pregnancy, political beliefs, religion or belief, sex or sexual orientation.

To achieve this, we will operate pay systems that are transparent, based on objective criteria and free from unlawful bias.

Conclusion

We will use the information in this report to support and inform our recruitment and employment practice to improve our workforce equality and diversity.

Data on the current workforce within ILF Scotland is robust in terms of age and sex. Data on the protected characteristics of ethnicity, disability, religion and belief, sexual orientation and gender reassignment continues to be limited due to the numbers of staff leaving questions unanswered or stating they would prefer not to answer. Work continues to increase awareness throughout our workforce to the benefits of disclosing protected characteristic data as well as reassuring staff that this information is confidential.

The accuracy of our equality profile data is important as it can assist our Board and SMT to plan the workforce of the future and provides justification for allowable positive action to make improvements leading to a workforce that reflects the population and geographical locations we work in.

As a Public Body, we aspire to work firstly in partnership with the Scottish Government and with other Public Bodies. It will be increasingly important for us to continue to work in partnership as we promote the Independent Living Fund Scotland as an employer of choice as we continue to support disabled people in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Contact Us

ILF Scotland
Ground Floor, Denholm House,
Almondvale Business Park,
Almondvale Way,
Livingston,
EH54 6GA

Telephone: 0300 200 2022
Email: enquiries@ILF.scot