Equality Impact Assessments

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Equality Impact Assessments

• Amy Bryant
• Senior Policy Adviser
• 13 November 2008
• Into the Professions Conference

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Structure of the workshop

• ECU who we are and what we do
• Impact assessments
• the legal context (focus on disability)
• the process
• Group discussion of the positives and negatives
• Examples of implementation

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Equality Challenge Unit

• Established in 2001 to promote equality for staff
  in higher education in the UK
• Remit extended in 2006 to include students
• Funded by the 4 UK higher education funding
  Councils, Universities UK and GuildHE
• 15 staff, based in London

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Mission statement

• Equality Challenge Unit supports the higher
  education sector in its mission to realise the
  potential of all staff and students whatever
  their race, gender, disability, sexual
  orientation, religion or belief, or age, to the
  benefit of those individuals, higher education
  institutions and society.

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Legal context

• 3 public sector duties
• Race (since May 2002)
• Disability (since December 2006)
• Gender (since April 2007)
• Specific duties including
• Schemes
• Monitoring
• Impact assessments
• The future Single Equality Bill

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Legal context
General duty Eliminate race, disability and
gender discrimination
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Disability Equality Duty

• Promote equality of opportunity between disabled
  persons and other persons
• Eliminate unlawful discrimination
• Eliminate harassment of disabled persons related
  to their disability

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Disability Equality Duty

• Promote positive attitudes towards disabled
  people
• Take steps to take account of disabled persons
  disabilities, even when that involves treating
  disabled persons more favourably than other
  persons

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The aim of equality impact assessments

• To understand staff and student needs
• To assess differential impact across equality
  groups
• To address differential treatment across equality
  groups in accordance with legal requirements
• A tool to
• - know how the institution is doing - short term
• - create positive change - medium term
• - mainstream - long term

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Impact assessment process

• A seven-stage process

Mitigation/changes
Preparation
Evaluation
Dissemination and review
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Stage 1 mapping

• Screening/Mapping of policies
• Identify all existing policies and practices
• Formal
• Informal
• Decide which equality group each policy affects
• Categorise low, medium or high relevance to
  disabled people (and other equality groups)
• Prioritise policies for full impact assessment

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Involving disabled people

• Involving disabled people must
• Be at an early stage
• Be influential and meaningful
• Be focussed
• Cover relevant stakeholders
• Use accessible mechanisms
• Be proportionate to the policy

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Stage 2 Analysis of Equality Data

• Good quality data lies at the heart of impact
  assessment
• data to decide relevance
• data to pinpoint problems
• data to understand the problems
• data to point to solutions
• Mixture of qualitative and quantitative data
• Benchmarking

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Equality data

• National

• Institutional

• HESA statistics (HEIDI)
• UCAS data
• Labour force surveys
• National Student Survey
• Government and academic research
• National statistics (census)
• Records from trade unions and other membership
  organisations

• HR monitoring
• Student registry monitoring
• Complaints and grievances
• Surveys and consultations
• Other?

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Collecting additional data

• Consultations with staff and/or students
• Surveys (face-to-face, telephone, web, postal)
• Interviews (group, individual)
• External reviews (consultant reports)

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Stage 3 4 Impact assess and mitigation

• Check for differential impact by equality group?
  (NB check positive impact for disability)
• Where differential impact found, options are
• Avoid the impact by
• Replacement of policy with alternative to meet
  aims
• Change the policy
• Justify need for continuance of policy and
  mitigate negative impact
• Abandon policy

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Stage 5 consultation

• Build on the consultation with groups in stage 1
• Opportunity to ensure proposed policy changes
  will have positive impact
• Allows buy-in from those previously involved
• Mitigates against consultation fatigue

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Stage 6 Publication

• Legal requirement of Race Equality Duty - publish
  results and monitoring arrangements
• Other areas good practice to do so
• Publication format to include
• Assessment of policy and data used
• Details of methods and outcomes of involvement
• Amendments planned and made
• How decisions have been taken
• Proposed timetable for review

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Stage 7 Monitoring and Review

• Not one-off process
• Cycle of institutional quality control
• Devise mechanisms for regular review
• Incorporation within 3-year cycle of review

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What is happening in your organisation?

• Examples of good practice
• What have been the positives and negatives to
  your institution and/or department of impact
  assessments?
• What further support do you need?

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Example implementations

• Staff and student ED forums
• Equality impact assessment briefings
• Internal guidance
• Reflective training interventions
• Centralised assessments

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• 7th Floor Queens House
• 55/56 Lincoln's Inn Fields
• London
• WC2A 3LJ
• Tel [phone]
• Fax [phone]
• www.ecu.ac.uk