Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government does not provide specific funding to local authorities or territorial NHS Boards to carry out suicide prevention training. The Scottish Government provides funding to Public Health Scotland (PHS) to manage the licences and processes to enable delivery of Scottish Mental Health First Aid training and suicide prevention training programmes (safeTALK and ASIST), which are delivered by accredited third-party trainers. This training is available to individuals living in Scotland, including those working in local authorities, NHS boards, third sector organisations and community groups. Between 2018-19 and 2020-21, PHS was allocated a total of £400,000, principally for the management of these training programmes as part of its mental health improvement and suicide prevention work programme.

Through work with our National Suicide Prevention Leadership Group to deliver on our Suicide Prevention Action Plan (Every Life Matters) , the Scottish Government funds PHS and NHS Education for Scotland (NES) to jointly develop and promote freely-available online learning resources on suicide prevention, mental health, and self-harm for the Scottish workforce. These resources are accessible through the NES online training platform. Between 2018-19 and 2020-21, the total allocation to NES and PHS, principally for this work on learning resources, was £495,659.