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:
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
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:
We actively recruit colleagues with disabilities and long-term health conditions. In addition, we have:
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.
The Equality Act 2010 sets out the ‘general equality duty’ for all public authorities to have due regard to the need to:
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 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:
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:
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.
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 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.
The responses show that the pandemic has severely affected our recipients. The key themes are:
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.
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:
We engaged with our Transition Fund Young Ambassadors Group in the last year in a number of areas and they have supported us by:
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:
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 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.
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.
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.
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
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):
Our Equality Outcomes, which will be integrated into our business plan for the next year are:
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.
We have improved our ongoing service delivery in response to feedback from the Covid-19 recipient feedback survey.
We have taken positive action to improve the diversity of our workforce to ensure that it is representative of the community we serve.
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.
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.
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.
We work with our partners to support and promote equalities in a wider context and learn from and benchmark with other public authorities.
Our Stakeholder Group in Northern Ireland is more representative of the recipients of our 2015 Fund.
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.
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.
| 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% |
Women: 75%
Men: 25%
Full-time: 65%
Part-time: 35%
Full-time: 77%
Part-time: 23%
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.
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.
ILF Scotland
Ground Floor, Denholm House,
Almondvale Business Park,
Almondvale Way,
Livingston,
EH54 6GA
Telephone: 0300 200 2022
Email: enquiries@ILF.scot
