Equality and Human Rights Mainstreaming Strategy

We recognise that although a strategy provides direction it does not achieve change on its own. Therefore, alongside the strategy we propose publishing two key supporting resources to drive change:

• an action plan - This will articulate actions Scottish Government are taking to mainstream equality and human rights. This will include:
  • collating the wide range of cross-cutting mainstreaming actions that have already been committed to elsewhere such as in responses to the recommendations of the First Minister’s National Advisory Council on Women and Girls (NACWG) or Scottish Government’s Mainstreaming Report published in April 2023.  We recognise that current commitments towards equality and human rights mainstreaming are not available in a single place and feedback from stakeholders to date highlighted these as include general statements rather than specific time bound actions
  • we believe collating and grouping these wide-ranging actions in a single place will increase transparency. For example, commitments to developing competence have been made in response to recommendations from the NACWG, response to recommendations from the Equality and Human Rights Budget Advisory group and in Mainstreaming Report 2023
  • additional actions will subsequently be identified as result of this consultation and associated engagement
  • it will focus on cross-cutting actions against the key themes
  • this action plan would be updated annually to add further actions and provide statements of progress
  • these statements of progress will directly link to and form part of required statutory reporting
• a toolkit to support the public sector, including Scottish Government, to deliver mainstreaming in practice. The toolkit will provide examples of the steps and provide practical tools that an organisation can take to mainstream equality and human rights. It will provide self-diagnostic tools, guidance, best practice examples and training materials. This will supplement the technical guidance for specific legislation. We envision the toolkit will:
  • be web-based and accessible to all providing practical and pragmatic support
  • be regularly maintained and updated
  • as well as hosting specific tools, it will provide a single portal to signpost to other resources: such as characteristic specific toolkits and technical guidance.

This will provide:

• • Self-diagnostic tools
  • Guidance and best practice examples
  • Training materials aimed at both specialists and wider staff
  • A single portal to signpost to other resources, such as technical guidance and characteristic specific development materials.