Chamber and committees

Yes, please—sorry.

How do the boards monitor bullying and harassment in your workforces? I am reflecting on the nature of small teams and where that can cause issues, particularly if someone is on a small island in Orkney or Shetland, where they know the whole community and could be raising an issue with their next-door neighbour or someone across the road.

On the point about images, I suppose that we also need to remember that not all disabilities are visible and that they affect different people who play different sports in different ways. I say that as someone with a vestibular-related disability. It is absolutely important that we consider people with different physical impairments, but how can we also get those less-seen impairments out there? They can also affect people’s participation in sport throughout their lives.

That is great.

As well as being small health boards, there are small teams within the boards that you oversee. When there are complaints within those small teams, how are those managed? Given that people might be working in teams with single-digit numbers of staff, how are they encouraged to speak up when there are issues?

To ask the Scottish Government whether the United Kingdom Government has communicated any intention to provide exemptions to the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020 in relation to legislation passed by the Scottish Parliament. (S6O-02229)

I have previously welcomed the creation of 140 new jobs in Motherwell as part of the DRS. Those are just some of the hundreds of jobs that are being created across Scotland as a result of the scheme. However, the jobs are now at risk because of the UK Government’s deliberate delay in excluding the scheme from the 2020 act.

Many other issues are being considered that might need such an exclusion, including a potential ban on disposable vapes. The common frameworks are meant to provide a forum for timely and collaborative decision making. Does the cabinet secretary agree that the DRS experience has shown those to be ineffective and that that could put at risk some of the public health and environmental measures that we are trying to take?

I will focus my remarks on two issues. One is something that I believe we should do more of to protect mental wellbeing and the other is a measure that I hope that we can explore to prevent suicide in young people.

In highlighting the issue of improving and protecting young people’s mental wellbeing, I first acknowledge that there will always be people who need support from in-patient or out-patient mental health services. However, I believe that there are strategies that we could adopt to ensure that we improve and protect mental wellbeing.

I recently visited Larbert high school in my region and met a number of the wonderful school nurses who support children in primary and secondary schools across Falkirk. They told me about all the projects that they deliver on how to recognise and deal with emotions and stress and how to recognise when something that people are feeling has become a wider mental health issue. The nurses run sessions for first years, who might feel anxious about coming to high school for the first time, and for pupils in secondaries 4, 5 and 6, for whom exam time can be a particularly pressured time.

The nurses teach young people how to find things that bring them relief and comfort, and that they can speak about issues with their peers or with the nurses and find a resolution. The nurses have also been working with young people who have found the transition back to in-person schooling after the pandemic tough.

In primary schools, it is about giving children the tools to be able to put a name to what they are feeling and describe what made them feel that way. It is about being able to communicate how they need help and what would help them to feel better—or what made them feel happy, if that is what they are experiencing. The nurses are a hugely passionate team. They are dedicated to improving the lives of the children in those schools, whom they definitely treat like their own bairns.

I certainly did not have anything close to that at school, and I believe that, through building resilience and healthy coping strategies, as well as changing attitudes towards speaking about mental health, the programmes that those school nurses are running could help young people as they transition to adulthood.

For young people who need CAMHS referrals, we need to ensure that they get the help in the way that they need it. Talking therapies and social prescribing might suit young people better, and we need to ensure that those who are in crisis get the support that they need. I currently have a concern about how we support children and young people who have suicidal intent or suicidal ideation. Rightly, young people should be able to say who has access to their information, who it is shared with and whether parents or guardians should be told when someone could come to harm.

A constituent shared with me the story of her 16-year-old son, Scott Martin, who was treated under CAMHS. Scott had been experiencing suicidal thoughts during an acutely bad period of mental health. His parents were not told of the severity of his mental health symptoms, and he tragically completed suicide. At the start of this parliamentary session, I met his mum, who spoke with so much love about her son, but she regretted that the thoughts that her son was having were not shared with her so that she could have supported him. I encourage everyone to have a look at the Scott Martin Foundation page if they can.

We need to address that issue and find a balance between protecting young people’s confidentiality and ensuring that someone who loves and supports the person, whether they live at home or not, knows the severity of their condition. It should not be about breaching confidences; it should be about how we ensure that young people are safe.

While we seek to improve mental wellbeing, we must be aware that there will always be people who will need mental health support. We need to ensure that the sector has the workforce that it needs, that services are accessible and that we have the correct treatment and support mix for everyone.

I encourage everyone who is listening and feels that this debate has resonated with them to reach out for support. For anyone who needs it, the helpline number for Samaritans is 116 123, and the charity’s Twitter account is staffed 24 hours a day. We all need support from time to time. If you need that help, please do not struggle alone.

Absolutely—you have pre-empted my next question wonderfully. We want a lot of care to be delivered in the community but, as you have said, much of the service has to be delivered in certain places due to its specialism. Is thought being given to how women who have had surgery and been discharged, but who feel that they need some of that wider non-surgical holistic support, can be referred back quickly so that they do not have the sorts of wait that there have been for accessing the service in the first place?

Good morning. Obviously, at the moment, we have the complex mesh surgical service, and there will undoubtedly be women who need surgery further into the future. Many will have surgery that might not resolve their symptoms but that might remove the mesh. Therefore, I am interested in how that service will evolve as women go through the process of surgical intervention.

Will the service evolve to treat some of the symptoms, such as pain? I do not think that it is entirely appropriate for some of the women to end up in generalised pain clinics, because of the issues that they have faced. What should the next evolution of the service look like, and how long should the service be in place?