The Scottish Councils Equalities Network (SCEN) comprises all the lead officers working on equalities in all of the 32 Scottish local authorities.

The lead equalities officers co-ordinate responses to legal duties placed upon local authorities in respect of race, gender, disability, faith / belief, age and sexual / gender orientation equality. They will usually be the primary reference point for elected members and chief officials for internal matters and for external contact from other authorities, voluntary sector groups, community planning partners and national equalities bodies.

SCEN brings together all the lead officers to discuss best practice, benchmark performance, discuss issues of common concern, arrange consultations on national equalities issues and provide a voice for local authority equalities work in Scotland.

Contacts:
To contact any of the lead officers please refer to the Key Contacts page on this site.

SCEN Meetings and Working Groups:
For details on SCEN Meetings, Working Groups etc please go to the SCEN Meetings page.

Terms of Reference (as at June 2006 - to be reviewed 2008):

1. Aims

• Networking
• Sharing best practice
• Influencing and contributing to the national agenda for equalities
• Continuing professional development

2. Membership

• One principal contact from each Council
• Additional contacts including HR contacts, Strand specific contacts i.e. disability, race etc. detailed to be provided by principal contacts
• Co-opted members to be invited as appropriate:

- SOLACE Equalities Champion

- COSLA - Jon Harris

- Directors of Personnel

- Equalities Commission

- Representative national organisations (including voluntary and community organisations)

• Membership lists to be kept on the web-site and it is the responsibility of each Council principal contact to update the membership list for their Council.

3. Information sharing

• The SCEN web pages have been developed on the Improvement Service web-site
• The web pages to include :

- best practice development (e.g. schemes, EIA toolkits, training packages) etc);

- network members responses to equality related questions posed by network members;

- membership contact details;

- working group network representatives to provide updates;

- equality events and conference details.

4. Meeting arrangements

• Formal quarterly meetings of which a note will be taken.
• The meetings will be themed.
• Meetings to be held at COSLA officers in Edinburgh from 11 am - 3 pm.
• Rotating chair and note taker from the list of volunteers
• The Chair will co-ordinate meeting venue details with COSLA, attendance numbers, speakers, papers for the meeting.
• Due to restricted room sizes and potential large number of participants, if a Council wants to send more than one representative they must inform the Chair to ensure that space is available.

5. Representing the network on working groups

• A list of network members involved in working groups will be maintained on the SCEN web pages
• Requests for network members to participate in working groups will be dealt with at network meetings.
• It is a condition of representing the network that updates are provided to other members at SCEN meetings for inclusion in the minute or added separately to the SCEN web pages.

6. Priority projects for action

• The network will agree an annual list of priority projects to get involved in and volunteers will be sought to lead on these projects from the network according to experience, interest etc
• The annual projects are listed below

Priority projects/actions

Project/action	Lead Responsibility	Project details and timescales
Development of SCEN web pages on IS website	Highlands, Edinburgh and Stirling	First phase of SCEN web pages near completion; further updating and development ongoing
Improvement Service equality assessment (EIF)	Perth and Kinross and Argyll and Bute	Draft 2 of EIF produced. Stakeholder meetings held with Equality Network, SOLACE etc. Toolkits and guidance to be developed IS to identify how they plan to progress this due to staff changes
Membership list	All SCEN principal contacts to ensure that entries on SCEN web pages are kept up to date by notifying any changes to GCVS. Additional contacts list including HR contacts, strand specific contacts i.e. disability, race etc to be provided by principal contacts for use by Network members when appropriate