Transcript Slide 1

• If Community Development is about
achieving social justice for all – how can we
make sure everyone benefits and
contributes, regardless of protected
characteristic?
• How can equality practices, discrimination
law and human rights be useful to us in
doing this?
Role of CD/3rd sector
•
•
•
•
•
•
Support your authorities
Hold them to account
Getting involved in “involvement”
Providing evidence for outcome setting
Assessing impact
Making sure Councillors are aware of their own
obligations in decision making
• Requesting and reviewing impact assessments
• Judicial review
The challenge of inequality
• 47% of disabled people are employed.
• Only 1/3 of managerial jobs held by women
• Women are paid 12% less than men in full time work
• Pakistani/ Bangladeshi’s have highest rates of working
age illness/ disability
• 1:8 LGBT people are victims of “hate crime” annually
4
• 1:3 Scots believe Eastern Europeans are taking
“Scots” jobs
Slide Number 3
Place based policy: hard to reach or
easy to ignore
• Place-based policies, which focus on geographical areas of
acute socio-economic deprivation, also need to be tested for
potential differential impact on different equalities groups. A
recent EHRC review of existing literature on place-based
policies –
• www.equalityhumanrights.com/scotland/research-inscotland/-hard-to-reach-or-easy-to-ignore-a-rapid-review-ofplace-based-policies-and-equality/
• Greater emphasis on the importance of carrying out equality
impact assessments at the level of single outcome
agreements.
Slide Number 4
• Greater use of logic modelling by CPPs and local
partnerships to reveal implicit assumptions in placebased policies and to bring out a focus on possible
positive and negative impacts on equalities groups.
• The need for greater awareness among policy-makers
and practitioners of the evidence relating to the
differential impact on equality groups and techniques
to infer the impact on these groups.
• Further evaluation at a local level of specific projects
and approaches to engaging equalities groups and
dissemination of this at a CPP and national level.
The Public Sector Duty
• Shifting emphasis from onus on individuals to
placing onus on public authorities
• Mainstreaming equality into public sector culture
in practical and demonstrated ways
• Taking a proactive and organised approach
• Tackling “institutional discrimination”
• Focuses on organisational change not individual
adjustments
Slide Number 6
General duty applies to
• Public authorities when carrying out their public
functions
– As service providers
– As policy makers
– As employers
• Also to services and functions which are
contracted out
• Also private and voluntary sector organisations
which carry out public functions
Slide Number 7
General duty
Duty to have due regard to the need to:
•
Eliminate discrimination, harassment, victimisation or
any other prohibited conduct
•
Advance equality of opportunity by having due regard
to
– removing or minimising disadvantage
– meeting the needs of particular groups that are
different from the needs of others
– encouraging participation in public life
•
Foster good relations – tackle prejudice, promote
understanding
Slide Number 8
Outcomes
• All public authorities have produced outcomes and
should have involved groups and individuals in setting
them
• Check your authorities outcomes
• Are they measurable : can you help them with this?
• Can you use the outcomes set in your funding
applications ?
• Hold them to account on their progress reports
Impact assessment
• Authorities must consider available evidence
• No direct duty to involve groups but they must
consider evidence provided to them: be pro
active
• They must consider mitigating actions: can
you help them with that
Impact assessment
• Very important than any assessment is
available to and considered by decision
makers
• Results of assessments must be published: has
this happened
• Assessment of existing policies or practices:
can you help with the prioritisation of these
Enforcement
• General duty: Any person/organisation can apply to
the Court of Session for judicial review of a public
body that they felt was failing to comply.
• Specific duty: Only EHRC can directly enforce.
However any organisation can use failure to meet a
specific duty as evidence of failure to meet the
general duty
Judicial review
• Way to challenge actions of a public body
• Common in England but not used much in Scotland
• Reviewing the lawfulness of a decision or action of a
public body, examines the legal validity of the
decision (process rather than result)
• Person must have “title and interest” to raise a
judicial review
• Petition to the Court of Session
• EHRC can intervene in cases raised by others
How the Framework Works
• Free online tool
• Eight modules, usable in any order, covering all main VCS
areas of action
• Suggested goals, actions and progress indicators
• Users can have their own account
• Accounts used to plan and track progress, set target dates,
automatic reminders etc
• Hope to build in capacity for users to engage with each other
• Web site - ehrf.org.uk
Information
• PSD Technical Guidance
www.equalityhumanrights.com/uploaded_files/PSD/technical_guid
ance_on_the_public_sector_equality_duty_scotland.pdf
• EHRC Scotland Report: “Counting the Cost”
www.equalityhumanrights.com/scotland/projects-policies
• EHRC Guide for decision-makers: Using the equality duties to
make fair financial decisions
www.equalityhumanrights.com/financialdecisions