- Asked by: Bruce Crawford, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 22 April 2004
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Current Status:
Answered by Malcolm Chisholm on 5 May 2004
To ask the Scottish Executive what guidance on priority groups has been published and on what dates, as referred to in Choose Life - A National Strategy and Action Plan to Prevent Suicide in Scotland.
Answer
Guidance was issued to all localauthorities and their Community Planning Partners in June 2003 on the implementationof Choose Life.
Guidance on priority groups wasprepared for consideration at the first National Support Network meeting in November2003. Since then, further work has been undertaken on the guidance material to producea toolkit resource, for use nationally and locally. This toolkit will help provideguidance on priority groups, in particular children and young people.
In addition to this, Cruse BereavementCare are being funded by the National Programme for Improving Mental Health andWell-Being to produce a video called “Living with Suicide” and supporting resourcematerials, on coping with bereavement following a suicide. These will be launchedlater in the year.
- Asked by: Bruce Crawford, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 22 April 2004
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Current Status:
Answered by Malcolm Chisholm on 5 May 2004
To ask the Scottish Executive what local alliances have been established, as referred to in Choose Life - A National Strategy and Action Plan to Prevent Suicide in Scotland
Answer
All 32 local areas have established local multi-agency Choose Life suicide prevention alliances as part of their Community Planning Partnership Structure.
- Asked by: Bruce Crawford, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 22 April 2004
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Current Status:
Answered by Malcolm Chisholm on 5 May 2004
To ask the Scottish Executive what research has been carried out on suicide prevention and what research has been published, as referred to in Choose Life - A National Strategy and Action Plan to Prevent Suicide in Scotland.
Answer
The Mental Health Research Teamin the Health Department Analytical Services Division is developing a research andevaluation strategy to support the National Programme. A major part of this workis focused on the actions laid out in
Choose Life – a National Strategy and ActionPlan. The first version of the strategy was published on “Well on the Web” inJanuary 2004, and will be updated regularly.
A three-stage process has beenadopted by the team to ensure that the evidence base relating to suicide and suicidalbehaviour is reliable, comprehensive and able to inform practice at national andlocal levels. A scoping exercise was commissioned in January (stage 1) to explorethe interests and areas of expertise of those centres and individuals focusing onsuicide-related research (nationally and internationally). Respondents are invitedto contribute to establishing the territory and focus of a series of reviews tocollate the existing evidence base on research relating to suicide and suicidalbehaviour, and to identify gaps (stage 2). The scoping exercise will be completedin June and the report will be published by September 2004. The reviews will becommissioned later in the year. Once reliable evidence to suggest gaps in informationhas been established, primary research will be commissioned (stage 3).
- Asked by: Bruce Crawford, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 22 April 2004
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Current Status:
Answered by Malcolm Chisholm on 5 May 2004
To ask the Scottish Executive, with reference to Choose Life - A National Strategy and Action Plan to Prevent Suicide in Scotland, how many events the National Support Network has organised and what local agencies have taken part.
Answer
The first meeting of the NationalSupport Network was held on 7 November 2003 in Edinburgh. The Network draws together representatives from eachof the 32 Community Planning Partnerships. The majority of the 32 local areas wererepresented at this summit.
Key national statutory agencieswere also present, including:
- NHS Health Scotland;
- Scottish Prison Service;
- Scottish Ambulance Service;
- Scottish Police Service, and
- NHS 24
Plus key voluntary organisations,including:
- Samaritans;
- Cruse Bereavement Care;
- Depression Alliance (Scotland);
- Penumbra, and
- Scottish Association for Mental Health
The National Support Networkaims to meet on an annual basis. Over the next two months, three regional meetingsof members of the National Support Network are also being held, to focus more closelyon regional issues.
- Asked by: Bruce Crawford, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 22 April 2004
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Current Status:
Answered by Malcolm Chisholm on 5 May 2004
To ask the Scottish Executive how many local training programmes have been developed, as referred to in Choose Life - A National Strategy and Action Plan to Prevent Suicide in Scotland.
Answer
Guidance to local areas, whichwas issued in June 2003, identified the development of local multi-agency trainingas a priority area. Each local area action plan addresses how local training isto be taken forward.
In addition to local trainingwork, a national training strategy is currently being developed for Choose Life.The first element of this is the introduction of a community-based training coursefirst developed in Alberta, Canada called Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (ASIST).ASIST is a training and capacity building programme to help develop a long-termsustainable infrastructure for suicide prevention. The training enables participantsto be ready, willing and able to provide emergency first-aid to persons at riskof suicidal behaviour.
ASIST is by far the most widelyused, acclaimed and researched suicide intervention skills training in the world.It has been refined over a period of 20 years with feedback from over 400,000 participantsand 2,000 active trainers worldwide. Links have been established between ChooseLife in Scotland and Living Works Education, a highly respected trainingorganisation based in Alberta, Canada, which developed the ASIST training.
From April 25 till May 7 2004,two 1 - week ASIST training programmes are being held in Scotland; one in West Lothianand one in Glasgow. Forty-eight individuals from around Scotland arebeing trained to become ASIST trainers. This is the first wave of training ASISTinstructors in Scotland and further courses are planned.
- Asked by: Bruce Crawford, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 22 April 2004
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Current Status:
Answered by Malcolm Chisholm on 5 May 2004
To ask the Scottish Executive, with reference to Choose Life - A National Strategy and Action Plan to Prevent Suicide in Scotland, how many national suicide prevention summits have been held and what issues have been discussed.
Answer
The first National Support Networkmeeting on 7 November 2003 also served as a National Suicide Prevention summit.Representatives of key National agencies along with local representatives met todiscuss the first phase of the implementation of Choose Life and to consider themost effective way of developing and informing the implementation work nationally.
- Asked by: Bruce Crawford, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 22 April 2004
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Current Status:
Answered by Malcolm Chisholm on 5 May 2004
To ask the Scottish Executive when guidelines for the media were published, as referred to in Choose Life - A National Strategy and Action Plan to Prevent Suicide in Scotland.
Answer
The National Programme for ImprovingMental Health and Well-Being is working with the National Union of Journalists (NUJ)in Scotland to provide guidance for people working in the media onthe reporting and representation of mental health and suicide. The NUJ plan to launchthis guidance later this year.In addition to this, Samaritanspublished a helpful guide in June 2002 for the media to use when reporting suicide.The guidelines, which are available electronically via Samaritans’ website –
www.samaritans.org/know/media_guide.shtm,are aimed at those reporting suicide in any media from factual description to dramaticportrayal. The guidelines outline suicide facts, media myths, signs of suicide riskand recommend phrases to use when referring to suicide.
- Asked by: Bruce Crawford, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 22 April 2004
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Current Status:
Answered by Malcolm Chisholm on 5 May 2004
To ask the Scottish Executive, with reference to Choose Life - A National Strategy and Action Plan to Prevent Suicide in Scotland, what performance management arrangements have been established to monitor the impact of the strategy and action plan on service provision.
Answer
Guidance was issued to each localarea in June 2003. This set out the requirements on local areas to produce a localsuicide prevention action plan by the end of December 2003. All local action planshave now been submitted, and have since been assessed by the Head of Implementationfor Choose Life.
Individual meetings have beenheld with all 32 local suicide prevention representatives. Local actions will besubject to further monitoring and performance management. This work will be undertakenby the Head of Implementation and the National Implementation Support Team.
In addition to this, an independentevaluation is being commissioned by the Scottish Executive to assess the impactof the first phase of the Choose Life Strategy and Action Plan. This evaluationwill report in 2006.
- Asked by: Bruce Crawford, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 22 April 2004
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Current Status:
Answered by Malcolm Chisholm on 5 May 2004
To ask the Scottish Executive how many local self-help groups have been established, as referred to in Choose Life - A National Strategy and Action Plan to Prevent Suicide in Scotland.
Answer
It is not possible to identifywhich, nor how many, local self-help groups have been established as a result ofChoose Life. Each local action plan addresses support for local self-help groups.Guidance to local areas, which was issued in June 2003, made clear that an element of local ChooseLife funds is to be used to help establish and maintain local self-help groups.This is one of the aspects which the National Programme will be monitoring.
- Asked by: Bruce Crawford, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Friday, 02 April 2004
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Current Status:
Answered by Lewis Macdonald on 4 May 2004
To ask the Scottish Executive what representations it has made to Her Majesty's Government in respect of how clause 76(5) of the UK Energy Bill provides for a transfer of functions in relation to "areas outside the territorial sea", in light of section 63 of the Scotland Act 1998 which enables transfer of functions "in or as regards Scotland", where "Scotland" includes the internal waters and territorial sea of the United Kingdom as are adjacent to Scotland.
Answer
The Scottish Executive maintains regular contact with Her Majesty's Government in respect of matters of mutual interest including the UK Energy Bill. The potential exercise of the powers that would be conferred by virtue of clause 85(5) of the bill - formerly clause 76(5) and which does not have a direct relationship with section 63 of the Scotland Act 1998 - is part of that contact.
