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
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%).
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.
The Equality Act 2010 sets out the ‘general equality duty’ for all public authorities who must have due regard 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.
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 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:
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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:
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:
Equality Impact Assessment is consistently applied across the organisation.
The Transition Fund has an appropriate reach across all eligible disabled young people in Scotland.
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.
We provide comprehensive monitoring and reporting on protected characteristics in line with good practice guidance.
Our Communications Strategy appropriately reaches those people with protected characteristics and commits to ensuring improved access across our services and information.
We work with, learn from and benchmark with similar public authorities to help us to promote equalities in a wider context.
Our workforce is diverse and representative of the communities we serve.
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.
Our Equality Outcomes that we will integrate as SMART Objectives into our business plan for the next year are:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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):
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.
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 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.
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
Action: Draw up an action plan following the analysis of the recipient feedback survey responses in Q1 and implement these in Q2. Complete
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
ILF Scotland
Ground Floor, Denholm House,
Almondvale Business Park,
Almondvale Way,
Livingston,
EH54 6GA
Telephone: 0300 200 2022
Email: enquiries@ILF.scot
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