www.wiltshire.gov.uk
Equality Impact Assessment - Research and Consultation
1. What is the name of the policy or service that is being assessed?
Corporate Research & Consultation Strategy
2. What are the aims of the policy or service? Whose needs is it designed to meet? What are the current priorities?
The Council’s Consultation Strategy and Research Programme provides intelligence and information for evidence based decision making. It provides information for the following activities:
- informs service managers of geographical and stakeholder issues
- supports service planning – identifying need and priorities
- helps to target new services/ initiatives/ projects appropriately
- assists in benchmarking and measuring socio-economic trends
- keeps councillors abreast of key issues and trends facing Wiltshire
The purpose of the strategy is to ensure that the issues facing Wiltshire communities are captured and well documented and that there is a two way flow of information between the local authority and local communities.
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?
The techniques and methodologies for researching and gathering information about particular stakeholder groups will differ. It is important to identify best practice in gathering information in appropriate ways. Currently the Consultation Strategy provides guidance for consulting with a range of stakeholder groups, i.e. Disabled people, older people, young people, people with learning disabilities. The Councils consultation strategy has been in place for several years and was produced in conjunction with a scrutiny task and finish group.
The County Council has recently achieved Beacon Status for ‘Getting Closer to Communities and ‘Valuing People’, as well as being held up for exemplary practice working with young people. There is also extensive and on going consultation with disabled and older people.
It is more resource intensive to gather good information from minority groups and specific targeting is necessary; a lack of consultation with Black and Minority Ethnic groups has been identified as a particular weakness. Other groups where there is less evidence of consultation into needs and priorities are women, and gay and lesbian men and women.
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?
BME Communities
There is a clear recognition that the Council need to improve consultation with Black and Ethnic Minority groups (BMEs). At a recent consultation evening with BME communities, concerns were raised about the accessibility of information, particularly about job opportunities, but also about access to services. The County Council’s black workers forum does not feel well supported by the organisation and has not been established as a mechanism for consultation. There is a general recognition amongst services that consultation with black and ethnic communities, including migrant workers, is an area of weakness and therefore needs to be moved up the agenda for the Council.
Gender
The County council will need to put in place a gender equality scheme shortly; currently there is a lack of research and consultation to provide the evidence base for this scheme. There is some research available that shows the socio-economic situation of women, particularly information relating education, skills and employment. However further consultation and action planning needs to be carried out with women of all ages.
Gay and Lesbian Men and Women
Very little consultation or research has been carried out with gay and lesbian men and women in Wiltshire. Some work has been carried out by the voluntary sector, but the Council does not currently have sufficient information to assess whether services are meeting the needs of this group or causing disadvantage.
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?
Consultation and assessment of current practice has been carried out with the research and consultation team; we identified strengths weaknesses and gaps in the current strategy and programme. All services have been asked to submit information
about planned consultation activities for this year, this has been published on the e-consultation web-site.
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?
Research and consultation is usually commissioned by a service or driven by the need to develop new initiatives with specific stakeholder groups. There is a possibility therefore, that some of our more vulnerable minority groups are not included. As the research and consultation programme is a way of feeding information into key decision making processes ie service planning and community planning, it is important that we recognise the need to check how minority and groups with different needs are included. We cannot justify excluding the views, needs and priorities of any of our stakeholder groups in Wiltshire.
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?
As a team, Research and Consultation officers are developing more awareness of the social inclusion agenda. Business planning meetings have focused on working with a number of disadvantaged and socially excluded groups. An inclusion checklist for ensuring good practice is being developed; the team are already reasonably aware of techniques that are more appropriate for consulting with particular groups but that will be strengthened by sharing skills and offering more advanced training.
In conjunction with the Equality & Diversity Steering Group the research team are developing mechanisms for on-going consultation with BME groups. Proposals will go back to a follow up meeting with BME representatives very shortly for further consultation.
A whole council gender equality scheme will be prepared and published in the next four months, including a review of existing gender research and action planning to tackle disadvantage. A project plan will be developed and monitored by the Equality & Diversity steering group.
8. How will you monitor the take-up or impact of the policy or service in future?
The research and consultation strategy should continue to expand on areas of work needed to ensure social inclusion in Wiltshire. There will be regular reviews of good practice in the methodologies used to gather and disseminate information, as well as a widening of the stakeholder groups which are included and targeted in the work programme. The other important aspect of improving research and consultation is to establish better mechanisms for collaboration and co-ordination with partner organisations. This will be undertaken as part of the Wiltshire Improvement Partnerships workstream on equalities, which the county council is leading on.
9. What actions do you plan to take as a result of this equality impact assessment? Please state any resource implications.
The following planned actions will be implemented:
- Inclusion check list for the research & consultation team
- Quarterly reviews assessing social inclusion priorities within the work programme.
- 6 monthly business planning meetings to include identification of minority stakeholder groups and plans to undertake consultation and research as appropriate.
- Design, consultation and implementation of a BME consultation panel. Resources are currently being sought from the Wiltshire Improvement Partnership as part of a joint project to improve consultation with Wiltshire’s BME communities.
- Strengthening of the Councils Black workers forum. Resources will be needed to ensure black workers are supported to participate in the forum, with dedicated officer support and that they are able to facilitate and respond to consultation.
- Design, consultation and implementation of a Gender Equality scheme. Dedicated officer time will need to be found from existing resources; an estimated eight weeks work.
- Improved co-ordination of research and consultation in partnership with other key agencies, through the Wiltshire Improvement Partnership and the Social Inclusion Partnership.
10. There is a legal requirement to publish the outcomes of Equality Impact Assessments. Please outline how / where this will happen.
This assessment will be published on the County Council intranet.
11. Name of person completing form
Corporate Research Adviser
Date assessment completed:
October 2006
12. Senior manager approval
Assistant Director Development Services
Date
26 Sept 2007
Contact Details
By Post
Equality & Diversity Team
Development Services
Wiltshire County Council
County Hall
Bythesea Road
Trowbridge
Wiltshire
BA14 8JN
By Email
By Telephone
01225 713510
By Hand
County Hall, Trowbridge
Opening Hours
Monday to Friday 9am - 5pm
