Meeting documents

Appendix 6: Equalities Impact Assessment

An equalities impact assessment was undertaken to ensure that the impact of this strategy does not impact adversely on minority or under represented groups.

The strategy has been written in a way that ensures all sections of the community have been considered and are not adversely effected by any of the suggested outcomes (unless they are the perpetrator of a crime however even in this instance they will be treated fairly and equitably).

The outcome of that assessment has highlighted the following issues that need to be addressed by the partnership and its partners in order to ensure equality.

Data Collection:

Each agency collects its own data and there is a lack of uniformity as to how this data is collected. This makes monitoring interventions and service usage by race, gender, disability, age or sexuality difficult. Many agencies are national and are unable to change their reporting mechanisms so this will not be resolved 100% at a local level however we can work better together in order to collect data that supports an equalities evaluation.

Service Monitoring:

We do not currently have a central monitoring of complaints and complements which means we do not have a true picture of how our service is being delivered. Each agency has its on complaints (complements) protocol and procedure but we do not share this information centrally. This means that we do not have a clear picture as to how service users are experiencing the service as a whole and whether a disproportionate amount of minority service users are feeling disadvantaged.

Consultation:

We do not have a single agreed protocol on consultation across the partnership. This in turn means that differing approaches to consultation, dissemination of the feedback and data collection are happening. Each agency has its own consultation mechanism some co-ordination of this could improve the delivery of services and ensure that minority groups are not over consulted or missed.

Evaluation and Review:

In previous year this has been less transparent however the new protocol as set out in this document tackles this issue. This in turn will enable us to check that we are not disadvantaging any minority groups.