Meeting Equalities duties

Equality means everyone has the right to be treated fairly and have the opportunity to fulfil their potential. For the Health and Social Care Partnership this means ensuring that all people in North Ayrshire are able to access the health and social care services they need, particularly those with additional support requirements or those who face additional barriers or challenges.

Promoting equality is one of North Ayrshire Health and Social Care Partnership’s key priorities. The principles of equality and fairness are central to all our activities.

On this page, who can find more information on what the Equality Act 2010 means for Integration joint boards.

You will also be able to access:

Our Equality Outcomes and Equality Outcomes Plan
Our Equality Mainstreaming Reports, providing an overview of how the IJB and HSCP have taken action to address local inequalities
Links to the Equality and Children’s Rights Impact Assessments (ECRIAs) we complete on all relevant policies and proposals. These assessments ensure that we take equalities into account at every stage of the policy planning process.

Equality Act and the Public Sector Equality Duty

Obligations on Integration Joint Boards

As a public authority identified in the Equalities Act 2010, North Ayrshire Integration Joint Board (IJB) must comply with the General and Specific Duties as set out in the Act.

General Duties

The Act sets out general duties for every public authority to have due regard. The General Duties place an obligation on public bodies 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.
Foster good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not.

The general duties apply to every function within our organisation, including how we plan and deliver frontline services, our role in policy making and in how we procure and contract services from outside agencies. The Act refers to this as ‘mainstreaming equality’.

The public sector equality duty covers the following protected characteristics:

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

Specific Duties

Specific duties have been designed to help authorities meet the three needs outlined in the general duty.

Due to the legislative structure of Integration Joint Boards (IJB), Health and Social Care Partnerships are exempt from certain specific duties. This is due to the unique structure of Integration Boards in that they are not employing bodies. IJBs direct the strategy and operations of Primary Health Care and Social Care services, all staff members remain employees of either NHS Ayrshire and Arran or North Ayrshire Council.

North Ayrshire Health and Social Care Partnership must:

Publish a report on how it has mainstreamed equality into the day-to-day operations of the organisation
Publish a set of equality outcomes which it considers would enable it to better perform the general equality duty. These must be reviewed within four years of initial publication
Publish a report on progress towards these outcomes
Make any reports published fully accessible to all
Assess relevant policies, procedures and practices through Equality Impact Assessment

In terms of our current reporting obligations, we need not:

Gather and use employee information;
Publish gender pay gap information;
Publish statements on equal pay;
Publish information on board diversity

However, while we are not required to report on specific duties in relation to employees, we work closely with North Ayrshire Council and the Board of NHS Ayrshire & Arran to ensure our staff are treated in a fair and equitable manner.

North Ayrshire Council Equality Outcomes

Public sector organisations must agree and publish a set of Equality Outcomes every 4 years. Our latest set of Equality Outcomes and supporting action plan were approved by the North Ayrshire Integration Joint Board in March 2023 and was published on 31st March 2023. This section contains the report on our Equality Outcomes, and sub-outcomes and actions specific to the HSCP.

Mainstreaming equalities and equality outcomes progress

As a public authority, we are required to report on the progress we have made to mainstream the public sector equality in our day to day activity. We report this every two years along with the progress made towards achieving our equalities outcomes.

Equality and Children's Rights Impact Assessment (ECRIA)

To ensure consistency with our parental bodies, the IJB adopts the same ECRIA process as established by North Ayrshire Council. In this we use the same screening and assessment templates and apply them to all new policy and proposals that are to be approved by the IJB.

Children’s Rights, Human Rights, the Fairer Scotland Duty and Island proofing have all been integrated into this online tool. New or adapted policies, procedures and strategies are assessed against these tools to ensure the Council is meeting the needs of the Equality Duty.

Please read our Equality Impact Assessment Guidance.

Summaries of ECRIA's carried out for 2024 are available below.

Assessments for Neurodevelopmental Disorders in Children and Young People - January 2024

The service will provide face to face neurodevelopmental assessments for Autism (ASD), Attention Deficit Hypersensitivity Disorder (ADHD) and Intellectual Disability assessments and post-diagnostic interventions for those Children and Young People identified by Ayrshire and Arran Health Board aligned to the Health Board’s access, delivery and waiting time reduction plans. 

The assessment found the equality groups which will be affected positively by the service are age and disability (physical and learning). There will also be positive impacts regarding the categories of: Other (poverty, homelessness, rural, carers and part-time workers etc.), the Fairer Scotland Duty and the European Convention on the Rights of the Child. No equality group will be negatively affected. 

No negative impacts were found in relation to equalities or children’s rights and the project was recommended to continue without alteration. 

Budget Proposal Assessments - March 2024

There were 16 screenings completed, which combined two proposals on payroll savings into one and two proposals on removing vacant posts into one. There were potential impacts in terms of the Fairer Scotland duty in two of the screenings, which are believed to be minimal, so a full assessment was not carried out for these. There were four proposals which progressed to a full assessment, and overview of potential impacts for each are as follows: 

Care Home Places: Longer waiting times affecting quality of care; carers responsible for supporting service user for longer, potentially impacting their employment capabilities. 
Specialist Continuing Care: Risk of provision of specialist care for future patients, loss of availability of male only provision, additional time and cost for family visitors. 
Children and Families service redesign: Risk of continued access to specialist care. Young people are more likely to have experience of care, a guardian with substance use issues, ACEs, and poverty than the general populace, so could cause further disadvantage to these groups. Children’s rights impacts – article 3, 18, 19, 33, 39
Montrose House: Longer waiting times affecting quality of care; carers responsible for supporting service user for longer, potentially impacting their employment capabilities.

The outcome in the assessments reflect that the proposals should still proceed, with mitigations for impacts. 

Blue Badge Service: Online Applications - July 2024

The proposal is to allow residents of North Ayrshire to:

apply for, and make payment for, blue badges electronically
maximise the available resources to ensure statutory service delivery can be maintained in the face of increasing demand
ensure that all applicants have access to the most current version of any application, reducing the likelihood of staff having to contact applicants to seek additional information
ensure all applicants have access to an online form that adheres to best practice in terms of accessibility

The assessment found the groups likely to be affected by the policy included age and disability as older people and those with a disability were most likely to use the service.   

No negative impacts were found in relation to equalities or children’s rights and the project was recommended to continue without alteration.

Stroke Community Support Service - October 2024

The proposal is for a Stroke Support Service to be provided for individuals living with a stroke in East, North and South Ayrshire and their family/carers/significant others. The Service will support those who experience communication difficulties and/or have difficulties with movement and undertaking activities of daily living following a stroke. The Stroke Community Support Service will: support the transition from hospital to home; and help to maintain the momentum of recovery in a home and community setting preventing relapse and reliance on statutory services.  

The equality groups which will be positively affected are: Age, Disability, Race and Ethnic Origin, Sex, Other (Poverty, homelessness, rural, carers, part time workers etc). There were no negative effects identified for any of the equality groups. 

No negative impacts were found in relation to equalities and the project was recommended to continue without alteration. 

Financial Inclusion Delivery Model - December 2024

The aim of the proposal is to restructure the Financial Inclusion team and to take a more targeted approach to service delivery through the Money Matters team. In April 2023, Money Matters (welfare rights advice for all North Ayrshire residents) and the Welfare Reform Advice Team (welfare rights advice for council tenants) formed a new Financial Inclusion service positioned within the HSCP. The proposal that from 1 May 2025, the following residents will continue to be able to access Money Matters services: 

people engaged with/referred by with HSCP/NHS services 
people referred by North Ayrshire Council services including Scottish Welfare Fund team, schools and employability services 
people referred by other services such as the foodbanks/larders, Women’s Aid or Citrus Energy 
people who self-refer who have disabilities, have dependent children, are pregnant and/or are carers.

The assessment found no potential impacts for specific equality groups as the service would be available to all through referral, and targeted the most at-risk groups. 

No negative impacts were found in relation to equalities and the project was recommended to continue without alteration. A potential Fairer Scotland implication was found in relation to those on low-income potentially being affected, but the service is open to referral by services and community organisations so those at risk will still be able to access the service. 