Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government is committed to continuing to work with partners across Tayside to support sustainable change, which ensures the safe and effective delivery of mental health services.

It is crucial that, as the workforce responds to additional pressures and challenges, leaders model and promote compassion. People working in health, social care and social work are the most significant asset for creating positive culture change.

Leaders must examine the needs of staff, ensuring their wellbeing is a priority to help them deal with the rapidly changing situation. This is why the Scottish Government has created Leading to Change, a national leadership development programme, which will be focused on growing compassionate and inclusive leaders who role model these values and create an open and welcoming culture that will help to improve recruitment and retention, and supports staff wellbeing.

To complement the wellbeing support available at a local level, we are continuing to provide a range of resources including the National Wellbeing Hub, a 24/7 National Wellbeing Helpline, confidential mental health treatment through the Workforce Specialist Service, Coaching for Wellbeing and funding for additional local psychological support.

We also continue to work with leaders across health, social care and social work, as well as hearing directly from staff, to understand where the current pressures are, and what further actions can be taken to mitigate their impact on staff wellbeing. Our ongoing response will be informed by a new Improving Wellbeing and Workforce Cultures strategy that will be launched in 2023. The Scottish Government is committed to improving the mental health and wellbeing of Scotland’s population and to ensuring everyone receives the best possible care and support from our health and care services. Delivering this can only be achieved with the right workforce capacity and capability. With substantial investment, we have record numbers of staff providing more varied support and services to a larger number of people than ever before.

Individual NHS Boards are responsible for undertaking the local workforce planning required to deliver safe and high quality services with a sustainable workforce. The Scottish Government works continuously with NHS Boards and Health and Social Care Partnerships to improve workforce planning. The report concurs with Scottish Government feedback to NHS Tayside on the content of its 3 year workforce plan, and draws attention to the need for the Board to ensure this links appropriately to the workforce required for mental and learning disability services in Tayside.

We are currently consulting on our strategic approach to workforce planning for mental health and wellbeing, this will contribute to the forthcoming Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy, which is due to be published in spring 2023.

We will also be working closely with partners to identify short, medium and long term actions for a Mental Health and Wellbeing Workforce Plan, to be published in 2023. The Plan will build on the National Health and Social Care Workforce Strategy, published in March 2022, which sets out a new framework to shape Scotland’s health and social care workforce over the next decade, placing training, wellbeing, job satisfaction, retention and the principles of Fair Work at its heart. It will look at the whole workforce journey and how we can plan for, attract, train, employ and nurture our mental health workforce.