Chamber and committees

Over the past number of years, even pre-Covid, there has been a rise in the number of people coming forward with mental health conditions. A lot of that is down to the fact that we are changing how folk think about their mental health. Much of the destigmatisation is down to a lot of hard work on the part of many stakeholders, but it is also due to the amount of investment that the Government has made through the see me campaign. Just the other week, in order to ensure that the campaign continues to thrive, the Government—this is also down to the Parliament, through the budget process—agreed to provide the campaign with £5 million over the next five years so that it has the comfort of knowing what it will be able to do over the piece.

It is a really good thing that we are destigmatising mental ill health, but we still have a long way to go. Let us be honest: there are still a lot of folk who will not discuss mental health issues or their own mental health. There are aspects that folk are still wary of discussing. The best example is probably the unwillingness on the part of many folk to talk about suicide and suicide prevention. The work that has been done here in Scotland by the national suicide prevention leadership group has been recognised by the World Health Organization. We need to go further, however, so we have said that we will double the suicide prevention budget during the course of this parliamentary session. We need to get folk to start speaking about the issues, which are often still taboo.

I will continue, if I may; I know that I have rabbited on for a fair while. A number of organisations and groups have major parts to play in helping us. The other week, I went to an event at St Mirren Football Club—which George Adam would, of course, say is at the centre of the universe, although I do not know that I could agree with that. For—if I remember rightly—the seventh year, St Mirren ran a conference day. It was initiated by a local lad who had seen some of his mates die by suicide and thought “Enough is enough.” That event was immense. It was heart rending and difficult, but it made people think about what is going on, what some folk are going through and what we need to do to help folk in their time of greatest need. That community-based approach is the best way, in some respects. The event brought a lot of footballers together for a very good competition, but that message was at the heart of it. We need to do more such things.

As I think that Mr Gulhane knows, those are not mental health link workers but community link workers. I do not have the detail of all that in front of me. As he said, 218 link workers are in post, and I will get colleagues to write to the committee around about other aspects of that. However, those are community link workers and not mental health workers.

There has been a huge difference through some of the things that we have done in recent times. Again, it would be worth the committee’s while to talk to other organisations about what different interventions have meant in different places.

To give the committee an example, distress brief intervention work is happening in a number of parts of Scotland. It has been expanded and we will no doubt also roll that out further. If you talk to the folks working in that area, you can tell the difference that it can make. Let us take the police, for example. Pressure comes off them if they can get others in to help folk at time of need, rather than officers being tied up, often for long periods of time and often without having the skill set to deal with the difficulty that the person is facing at that point—although, let us be honest, most of our officers are pretty immense. Those things therefore make a huge difference.

Another example, although not quite so recent, is work that went on at the Victoria hospital in Fife as part of a joint partnership between Shelter, NHS Fife and the Scottish Government, which focused mainly on housing but also on dealing with mental health. Getting folk housed and getting them support took pressure off the accident and emergency department.

There are a lot of things going on and a lot of learning is happening. We have to consider what is working, what is working well and how we can export that elsewhere. The co-operation that exists in many places is beneficial for all those organisations, but the outcomes can be immense for individuals who are vulnerable and in a lot of distress.

There was a huge amount in that question. Ms Webber said that it is all buzzing about in her head, and I think that it is probably all buzzing about in our heads at the moment, as well.

I explained to the committee earlier the level of engagement that we have with partners around getting all of this right as we move forward. At the moment, we have a significant number of folk in hospital who should not be there, and it is best that they are not there. Some of the solutions will be interim ones, but the ambition is to get folk back to living independently, with support, if that is possible and as soon as we can.

Rather than going on about all of the possibilities, we will write to the committee about what we are doing. We do not have some of the information that Ms Webber is asking for regarding people in interim situations. I will write back to the committee in more depth to explain how we are handling that.

Yes. Some of the thinking obviously has to be different in rural areas than it is in cities. Sometimes it is not so easy to plug a gap if there is illness in a remote rural place. Some places have considered having flying squads—which is their expression, not mine—so that they can deal with care at home in places where a gap has been created because of illness or whatever.

Many people are thinking out of the box around how we do our level best for folk, and that needs to continue. We need to continue to push that. What we require—some of the folk on the calls with me are probably sick fed up of me of saying this—is collaboration, co-operation and a lot of communication in order to get that right over the piece.

No—at the moment, I am not confident that everybody can access respite support. I should say that I want to get away from using the word “respite”; I prefer the phrase “short-term breaks”, which is a much better way of describing it. As somebody said to me, “respite” implies that care is seen as a burden, and we need to get away from that kind of thinking.

I want to ensure that, as we move forward, short-term breaks become a right, as they should. That is why the national care service consultation contained questions on that subject. I would be telling porkies if I said that, at this moment in time, everybody can access what is required, because I know that that is not the case.

I was talking to managers of carers centres only yesterday, and it is clear that there is a combination of things going on that add to the pressures. In some areas, day services have not fully opened up. That is sometimes down to space difficulties, or they have been in the same position in the past. We need to continue to open those centres up safely.

Equally, as was said to me yesterday, some carers are still afraid to send their loved ones to daycare services or on short-term breaks because they are still feart about the pandemic. As we move out of the pandemic, we will have a job of work in regaining folks’ trust and helping them to get back into their previous routine. That will take a while.

I cannot say that we are doing everything to meet those needs at this moment in time. However, as we move forward, we need to ensure that we do that, which is why that part of the national care service consultation is very important.

That is a question and a half. Introducing golden hellos, or golden handcuffs, is a very difficult thing to do, and it could end up creating more problems than it resolves. I will be honest with Ms Mackay and the committee. I am pretty pragmatic about many things, and I do not automatically shut doors on suggestions. We could look at that but, in some regards, I do not think that it is necessarily a solution.

I am sure that that will be the case, convener.

I am in your hands, as always, convener.

Third sector representation is better in some places than it is in others. On how we as a Government interact with the third sector, I speak to the third sector all the time, and it is represented on many of our strategic groups and bodies. With regard to health and social care partnerships in particular, it is fair to say that there is pretty good dialogue with, and representation of, the third sector in some of them—although that is without votes at the table—and not so much in others.