Fairer Scotland action plan: progress report 2020

Health, including mental health

COVID‑19 – the single greatest public health crisis of our lifetimes – has had a profound impact on our health, economy and society, indeed our whole way of life. As we adjust to living with COVID‑19 for the immediate future, we must promote lifelong health and wellbeing.

Before the crisis, we know there were too many people at risk as a result of long term health conditions – the crisis has exacerbated that. We will focus on the determinants of health inequalities, and drive forward our efforts to improve mental health and wellbeing.

We will renew our work on improving population health, in recognition of the impact the virus has had. This will have a clear focus on mental health and wellbeing and also the specific impacts the virus has had on existing health inequalities. While of course there are causes of poor health that we can tackle and treat, at their core they are determined by social inequalities. It is why the wellbeing economy that we want to build is so vital; a healthier workforce means a healthier economy, and vice versa.

To set out how we will ensure our action on mental health recognises, learns from, and responds to the challenges of COVID‑19, we published our Mental Health Transition and Recovery Plan in October 2020.

Health support for young families

We remain on course to deliver our commitment of 250 Community Link Workers (CLWs) by the end of this Parliament. There were 112 CLWs in post when the data on recruitment was collected nationally in September 2019. The reporting process to track progress of the CLW programme was temporarily suspended in March 2020 to allow Health and Social Care Partnerships to focus on their response to COVID-19, but has now reconvened. A survey issued in June to establish how COVID-19 was affecting the work of CLWs reported back no significant impact on recruitment.

Our Integrated Health and Social Care Workforce Plan commits funding to address the shortfall in Mental Health Officers (MHOs) by 2022-23. To deliver that commitment an MHO Capacity Building Grant Scheme, has been developed in close partnership with local authorities, COSLA and other stakeholders making £1.5 million available over three years. In 2019-2020 the Scheme awarded £0.5 million to 13 local authorities to train 19 additional MHOs. A further £0.5 million will be invested in each of 2020/21 and 2021/21.

COVID-19 has however impacted on our ability to report on oral health inequalities. The Childsmile Programme, where nursery and schoolchildren receive regular tooth brushing instruction and fluoride varnish application, is now part of the mainstream dental provision delivered in nurseries and school throughout Scotland. Due to the COVID restrictions we did not receive a 2020 report from the National Dental Inspection Programme and are therefore unable to confirm whether oral health inequalities have narrowed further since last year. The Childsmile programme is expected to resume in early 2021.

Mental health

In 2017, we launched our ten year plan for mental health, backed by an initial £150 million over the course of this Parliament. In 2018, we committed to invest a further £250 million in mental health over the next five years to improve services for children, young people and adults.

All education authorities have an implementation plan in place for providing school counsellors and many have accelerated the implementation of their plans in response to COVID‑19. We will also increase the school nursing workforce by an additional 250 school nurses by the end of 2022. We will continue to deliver on our 2018 Programme for Government commitment for more than 80 additional counsellors in colleges and universities over four years and are currently over two‑thirds of the way to meeting that commitment.

In 2019, we convened a Mental Health in Schools Working Group, made up of key stakeholders with expertise in this area, to support the Scottish Government's ongoing commitment to supporting positive mental health in children and young people in school. In May 2020, the Group published, for the first time, a resource^[15] which collates all the resources available to schools to support children and young people's mental health and wellbeing. As part of this work, a new professional learning resource for all school staff will be published in spring 2021 which will provide essential learning required to support children and young people's mental health and wellbeing. The Group is also developing a Whole School Approach framework around mental health to support schools which will link into classroom practices.