Disability Equality Scheme

Foreword

Buckinghamshire Fire & Rescue Service is committed to the equality of opportunity in terms of both the provision of its services to all sections of the community in Buckinghamshire and Milton Keynes and in its role as an employer.

As part of this commitment, the service has produced this Disability Equality Scheme which outlines its strategy with regard to promoting equal opportunity and preventing unlawful discrimination.

The scheme also details an action plan for ensuring that the service takes account of disability issues in all aspects of policy making, service delivery and employment practice.

The scheme is a living document, which will be used and reviewed on a continuous basis. The service welcomes comments and suggestions for action which can be considered as part of the review process.

It should be noted that the scheme should not be read in isolation. The service is committed to all aspects of equality and the action plan within the scheme will become one part of the service’s overall Diversity Scheme.

Damian M Smith, Chief Fire Officer, Buckinghamshire Fire & Rescue Service

Councillor David Rowlands, Chairman, Buckinghamshire and Milton Keynes Fire & Rescue Authority

1 INTRODUCTION

Buckinghamshire Fire & Rescue Service is committed to the equality of opportunity in terms of the provision of its services to all sections of the community in Buckinghamshire and Milton Keynes and in its role as an employer.

As part of this commitment, the service has produced this Disability Equality Scheme which outlines its strategy with regard to promoting equality of opportunity for people with disabilities. The scheme also details an action plan for ensuring that the service takes account of disability equality in all aspects of policy making, service delivery and employment practice.

The scheme is a living document, which will be used and reviewed on a continuous basis. The service welcomes comments and suggestions for action, which can be considered as part of the review process. To this end the scheme will be sent to local organisations representing disabled people to canvass their views and comments.

Context

2 BACKGROUND

To ensure that disabled people can live in communities where they can participate fully and equally a Disability Equality Duty has been placed on the public sector. The duty means that public authorities need to proactively look at ways of making sure that people with disabilities are treated equally and their needs are considered as part of an integral part of the authorities work rather than an add on.

The duty is not just about changes to buildings or adjustments for individuals, its about weaving equality for disabled people into the culture of public authorities in practical and demonstrated ways. This means that public authorities need to be actively thinking about the principles of disability equality from the outset rather than responding to individual disability-related discrimination complaints or cases.

This institutional approach will help to tackle the underlying issues of discrimination and ultimately lead to both better employment prospects and the provision of discrimination free services.

The Legal Framework

The duty is contained within the new Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) 2005 which strengthened existing disability equality legislation to tackle the inequalities, discrimination and harassment faced by people with disabilities in the community.

The Disability Equality Duty comprises two parts:

i. The general duty

ii. The specific duties

The General Duty

This an overall framework to help public authorities to better achieve disability equality. Under this the fire service must, when carrying out our functions, have due regard to the need to:

Promote equality of opportunity between disabled people and non-disabled people

Eliminate discrimination that is unlawful

Eliminate harassment of disabled people that is related to their impairments

Promote positive attitudes towards disabled people

Encourage participation by disabled people in public life

Take steps to take account of disabled people’s impairments, even where that involves treating disabled people more favourably than non-disabled people.

The Specific Duties

To assist authorities in planning, delivering and evaluating action under the general duty, the Disability Discrimination Act contains a number of more specific duties at the heart of which is the Disability Equality Scheme. The duties are intended to provide a flexible framework to guide public authorities to meet their general duty in the most appropriate way and so may apply differently, depending on the size and nature of the organisation. The specific duties state that the public authority should:

Publish a Disability Equality Scheme demonstrating how it intends to fulfil its general and specific duties

Involve disabled people in the development of the scheme

Include particular information in the scheme (which is detailed below)

Within three years of the scheme being published, take the steps set out in the action plan (unless it is unreasonable or impracticable to do so) and to put into effect arrangements for gathering and making use of information

Publish a report containing a summary of the steps taken under the action plan, the results of the information gathering and the use to which the information is being put.

What is a Disability Equality Scheme (DES)?

Like our Race Equality Scheme, the DES is a strategy and realistic action plan. It summarises the approach we are taking to disability equality and how these fit into our corporate aims. The scheme also includes how we plan to carry out each part of the specific duty, that is our arrangements for:

Assessing, consulting on and monitoring our functions and policies for adverse impact on promoting equality of opportunity

Involving disable people and organisations representing the interests of disabled people and other stakeholders

Using the information that we have gathered

Publishing results of our employment and service delivery monitoring, impact assessments and actions in accessible formats

Ensuring that our customers have access to all our services

Training our employees

Reviewing the DES and Action Plan, on a three yearly cycle.

3 THE FUNCTION OF THE FIRE SERVICE IN BUCKINGHAMSHIRE

Our Vision

Buckinghamshire & Milton Keynes Fire Authority has a vision for what it wants to achieve for the people of Buckinghamshire and Milton Keynes. It is:

Making you safer, by working together to reduce death, injury and damage to property, environment and our heritage from fire and other emergencies. This will be achieved by balancing the provision of prevention, protection and response services.

For simplicity and as our key message we use the strap line Making You Safer.

Our Priorities

Underpinning the vision we have a set key of priorities – the things that we need to concentrate our efforts on doing in order to deliver our vision.

Our key priorities are:

Working in partnership with key agencies to promote awareness, and build responsible communities through education to reduce risk to life, property, our heritage and the environment

Having a healthy, flexible, diverse, skilled and motivated workforce

Reviewing and continuously improving performance

Delivering these priorities cost effectively

Maintaining a continuing professional response to all operational emergencies

Buckinghamshire Fire & Rescue Service values diversity both in the staff we employ and the community we serve. The service seeks to treat everyone with dignity and respect and to take into account different needs and expectations. It also seeks to promote equality of opportunity both in employment and progression within the service. The service is also seeking to ensure that the message of ‘making you safer’ is carried to all of the community it serves and that all members of the community have equal access to our services. In support of this we have a commitment to the following values:

Service to the Community

Through:

Working with all groups to reduce risk

Treating everyone fairly and with respect

Striving for excellence in all we do

Being answerable to those we serve

People

Our values will be demonstrated by everyone practising and promoting:

Fairness and respect

Recognising commitment and the achievement of excellent service

Honesty and trust

Opportunities to develop and learn

Co-operation and inclusive working

Diversity

We value diversity in our service and in the community by:

Treating everyone fairly and with respect

Challenging prejudices and discrimination

Creating opportunities to meet the different needs of people and the communities

Promoting equal opportunities in terms of recruitment, promotion and retention.

Improvement

We value improvement at all levels of the service by:

Accepting responsibility for our performance and actions

Being open-minded and receptive to alternative approaches

Learning from our experiences

Supporting others to enable them to achieve their goals

Encouraging innovation and creativity

The aim of this scheme and the wider diversity scheme is to ensure that our policies and procedures move us towards the aims and objectives given above. It will ensure that there is the removal of any unintended adverse impact on race equality through our functions, policies and procedures.

4 MEETING THE GENERAL DUTY

The service is fully committed to the promotion of equality of opportunity, the promotion of disability equality and the eradication of all forms of unlawful and improper discrimination on the grounds of disability.

Consideration of issues relating to disability has, until recently, been confined to those relating to service delivery and has tended to be talked on an ad hoc basis as and when issues occurred. The purpose of this scheme is to ensure that we develop robust policies and implementation strategies that recognise and respond to the diversity of impairments and other disabilities within our communities and workforce when delivering on our key priorities. We will also seek to actively promote disability equality within our communities and workforce.

5 MEETING THE SPECIFIC DUTIES

The production of this revised Scheme continues the process of meeting the specific duties of the Act. The completion of the actions listed within the timetabled plan given below will mean that the service will be complying with the specific duties.

Through the implementation of this scheme we will strive to deliver the following:

The ability to demonstrate how we have involved disabled people, groups and other stakeholders in the work specified in the action plan and the monitoring and review of the scheme.

The outcomes of an investigation into the barriers faced by disabled people across all impairment groups in accessing our services and the action we intend to take to remove them.

Information and knowledge about what the needs of disabled people are and which of these are most important to them, derived from engaging with disabled people, groups and other stakeholders.

Ensure we are fully compliant with the Disability Discrimination Act

Communication of our responsibilities to our community and other stakeholders including members of our Fire Authority, managers, employees, representative bodies, local strategic partnerships and other partnership arrangements in the public, voluntary and private sectors.

The production of a process by which the needs of disabled people can be taken into account when planning and delivering operational, community and technical fire services.

Clear information on how we intend to ensure that our employment and training opportunities are accessible to disable people.

Clear information on how this scheme is linked to other equality policies, objectives and targets.

The provision of information for disabled people in accessible formats

The development and maintenance of partnerships with disability groups/organisations to promote equality of opportunity and to challenge ignorance and prejudice surrounding disability issues in the wider community

An annual report on the progress made against the action plan.

In addition to the specific work outlined above the following measures will be used during the implementation of the scheme.

Identifying Relevant Function and Policies

One of the specific duties is to identify all the functions and policies carried out within the service. This is fundamental to mainstreaming the issue of disability equality.

As with the race equality legislation, we feel that the term ‘function’ should encompass the full range of our duties and powers. This includes support functions as well as service delivery.

In line with our stance on Equality Impact Assessments, the term ‘policy’ should also be interpreted as having wider meaning, including the full range of formal and informal decisions we make throughout our organisation and the way in which we do or do not use our powers. Policies may take the form of a clear written statement (an OC for example) or may be implicit in management decisions or ‘custom and practice’. It is important to include both written and unwritten policies, as the latter are less open to inspection and review and thus there is a greater risk of them contravening the duty to promote equality.

‘Relevant’ means having implications for (that is, affecting) the General Duty. A function or policy will be relevant if it has, or could have, implications for promoting disability equality.

Relevance Assessment

Once all the functions and polices have been identified it is then necessary to assess each of the functions and policies for their relevance. This is done by asking a series of questions including:-

Is this is statutory function or policy?

Does this function or policy impact on the public?

Does this function or policy eliminate unlawful discrimination against disabled people from all backgrounds?

Does this function or policy promote equality of opportunity? (considering all impairments within the definition of a disability)

Does this function or policy promote good relations between disabled people and other members of our community?

Is there any evidence or reason to believe that this function or policy could affect disabled people adversely or differently?

Is there any public concern that this function or policy is being carried out in a discriminatory way?

This process is used to give each function and policy a grading as to whether or not they have a high, medium or low relevance to the duty. This grading then determines the priority they should be given for undergoing an Equality Impact Assessment (these are explained in more detail in the next section).

It will also be necessary for these questions to be applied to all new policies or proposed revisions, as they are being drafted.

Equality Impact Assessments

Carrying out Equality Impact Assessments is a way of finding out whether a policy or procedure (or one that is proposed) affects different groups of people in different ways and whether this results in adverse treatment.

An interim policy and procedure has been introduced and a pilot test is currently underway. Full details of this can be found in OC83

Monitoring Polices for any adverse impact on the duty to promote Disability Equality

Monitoring is a vital component of the Impact Assessment Process. Monitoring specific areas of our activity and service delivery can provide us with crucial information as to whether different groups experience the same treatment or level of service and thereby enabling us to identify areas that need improvement or overhauling.

We will monitor through a variety of mainstream and specific structures and systems:

Collation of statistical information through IT-based and paper systems, for example:

Workforce representation data using Snowdrop

Staff perceptions, attitudes and satisfaction through a bi-annual staff survey

Incident information through fires

During the life of this scheme the service will develop and implement methods for consultation with staff and the community on the outcomes of policies and procedures.

Monitoring

During the life of the scheme there will be continual internal monitoring and review of the scheme by the Director of Personnel and the Diversity Group.

In addition to South East Region is developing a system for peer review of Equality Schemes which will give another level of scrutiny.

6 ARRANGEMENTS FOR PUBLISHING THE RESULTS OF ASSESSMENTS, CONSULTATIONS AND MONITORING

We will publish a half yearly summary report that will include the following information obtained through the implementation of the DES:

Details of policies which have been impact assessed for disability equality and the results of these assessments

Actions taken to address any potential adverse impact on any newly assessed policies

Results of monitoring of policies identified as having the potential to impact on disability equality

The results of public consultation on policies will include brief details of why the consultation took place and how it was carried out; the responses or views expressed by the consultees; policy options available and what we are proposing to do following consultation.

As part of the implementation of the scheme we will be investigation the best ways in which to make information accessible to all sections of the community. Once we have this information the half yearly reports will be available in those formats identified.

7 ARRANGEMENTS FOR ENSURING PUBLIC ACCESS TO INFORMATION AND SERVICES

The service is aware that members of the public may experience barriers to accessing information and services.

There are currently arrangements in place to enable the service to identify the information needs, service needs and service experiences. These include, but are not limited to:

Face to face, telephone, correspondence and internet contact

Complaints monitoring

Outreach work with community groups, schools and colleges

Within the life of the scheme the service will review the mechanisms by which information is provided. Within this, the service will consult with communities to identify their particular needs for accessing information and services to review this provision to take account of identified needs.

8 TRAINING STAFF

As part of meeting the Disability Duty we are required to put into place arrangements for training our employees about their responsibilities. We already have in place a generic training programme that was developed to raise awareness across all six equality strands.

To ensure that individual employees have the required knowledge for their roles we will investigate the best way to deliver this training and during the life of this scheme introduce appropriate training packages.

9 MONITORING AND REVIEW

The Diversity Group will monitor the Disability Equality Scheme and the Action Plan across the year. The Action Plan will be formally reviewed annually and the results of this review will be published at the end of each January. The review will contain a revised action plan for the following 12 months.

There will be a full review of the Disability Equality Scheme in the early part of 2009 with a new scheme being published in December 2009.

All these documents will be made as readily accessible to the public as possible and advice will be taken on making this happen.

10 CONSULTATION

The service will communicate with employees about the scheme and the action plan through the usual internal communication channels.

The service will seek to consult with the public as appropriate when reviewing or developing policies and procedures. However, the extent and nature of this consultation will need to be proportionate to the policy under consideration and its potential impact on the public.

The action plan contains an item relating to the development of consultation by the service with the public.

11 COMPLAINTS

We shall do our best to meet the duties placed upon us under the DDA. We are fully committed to implementing the actions set out in this scheme. However, we do recognise that we may get things wrong or that people may be dissatisfied with the way we are carrying out our duties. We therefore intend to make sure that disabled people in our communities know that they have a right to complain about how we are discharging our duties and are given the information in the required formats to do this.

We will deal with any complaints about our performance in respect of this scheme through our formal complaints procedure.

12 COMMENTS ABOUT THE SCHEME

The service welcomes constructive comment about this scheme or any aspect of the service it provides and the impact that may have on disability equality issues. If you wish to make a comment, this should be addressed to the Chief Fire Officer, Brigade Headquarters, Stocklake, Aylesbury, Bucks, HP20 1BD.

If you wish to be involved in the process of reviewing the scheme or implementing the action plan you should contact Karen Grunwell, Group Manager – HR Policy & Practice at Brigade Headquarters, Stocklake, Aylesbury, Bucks, HP20 1BD, or email on kgrunwell@bucksfire.gov.uk

DISABILITY EQUALITY SCHEME ACTION PLAN