Equality impact assessment - libraries home and special services

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1. What is the name of the policy or service that is being assessed?

Home Service and Special Services

2. What are the aims of the policy or service? Whose needs is it designed to meet? What are the current priorities?

Our policy is to make a library service available to the widest range of people who may experience difficulty in using a library service point, and to provide it in a flexible way to meet people’s individual needs. Our aim is to make our service points and our services accessible and easy to use for everyone.

3. In what ways might this policy or service affect some groups of people differently? Might some groups find it harder to access the service? Do some groups have particular needs that are not well met by the current policy or service?

Disability

The Home Service is a book delivery service provided by library volunteers and is designed for people who are unable easily to leave their home. The recipients may be disadvantaged by reason of age, frailty, disability, illness or social problems.

The ‘assisted reader’ borrower category gives concessions to people unable to leave home, but who have a friend or relative who can visit the library on their behalf. This category can also be used to help people with a disability who might have difficulties in regular use of a library.

The Visually Impaired category allows similar concessions – no fines, no request fees.

The nine larger libraries in the County have CCTV magnifiers which allow reading and writing to be magnified up to 17 times.

Access software is available on large-screen public terminals in the larger libraries – this gives magnification and sound for Windows applications and Internet use.

People who are housebound are able to access the library catalogue, to reserve and renew items through the library website

Disability awareness  sessions are held regularly to train all new staff

The lay-out of our buildings, the guiding and the leaflets are all designed to help people with various disabilities

There is an introduction to library services on cassette

Gender

The stock carried and chosen for Home Service users reflects the reading interests of men and women

Racial/Ethnic Groups

Books in a variety of languages are available to reserve through the County request system.

Sexual Orientation

Books are stocked to provide a representative range of fiction authors and subjects

Religion/Belief

A range of titles is available to Home Service users

Age

The service is available to anybody with a disability or illness of some kind irrespective of age

4. What evidence do you have for your judgement? Is there evidence of public concern (e.g. complaints)? Have staff raised concerns? Is there local or national research to suggest that there could be a problem?

There is no evidence of staff or public concerns about equality issues regarding the Home Service.

Individual requests for a particular type of service or materials are passed to the Special Services Librarian who meets demands as resources allow.

5. Who have you consulted with as part of your assessment? What were the results? Have you published the results of that consultation? If so, where?

Home Service customers are surveyed annually as to their satisfaction with the materials supplied. Their views about the service generally are also solicited. The percentage of people who thought the materials were Good or Very Good was 98% in December 2006.

A survey of large print users was carried out in 2005 by Loughborough University together with a large print publisher. The percentage of those regarding the choice as Very Good or Good was 75%

Prior to installing equipment and software for visually impaired people, there was a consultation period with groups around the County about the services needed in 1999. Systematic consultation has not been repeated, although sessions specifically aimed at VIP have been held at a variety of libraries since and comments sought.

6. If you have found that the policy or service might have an adverse impact on a particular group of people, can you justify this?

N/A

7. If the impact cannot be justified, what do you intend to do about this? Are there changes that you could introduce which would make the policy or service work better for this group of people? Is further research or consultation required?

N/A

8. How will you monitor the take-up or impact of the policy or service in future?

Data from library management system – visually impaired, Home Service and assisted reader categories give us a picture of how many of our users regard themselves as disabled or are in receipt of a particular service. Age, gender and ethnicity are also collected in the registration process.

9. What actions do you plan to take as a result of this equality impact assessment? Please state any resource implications

• Our plan over the next five years is to improve our marketing and increase the number of people receiving a Home Service. The MLA have recommended a figure of 19% of those who are helped by social services to live at home. Our present figure is 8%. Our target for 2007 is to increase our customer base by 5 at each library which should bring us up to 11%. This increase will require a considerable input of staff time, as a number of extra volunteers will need to be recruited and managed.
• Hold sessions for VIP at two libraries in autumn 2007 and to use the opportunity to consult our users – resources required will be staff time.

10. There is a legal requirement to publish the outcomes of Equality Impact Assessments. Please outline how / where this will happen

Council website

11. Name of person completing form

Senior Librarian Special Services

Date assessment complete

20.02.07

12. Senior manager approval

Assistant Director Libraries & Heritage

Date

23.2.2007

Last updated: 13 May 2009