Mental health and wellbeing strategy, delivery plan and workforce action plan: human rights impact assessment (HRIA)

Empowerment

Individuals and communities should understand their rights and be fully supported to participate in the development of policy and practices which affect their lives.

Extensive and targeted consultation and engagement was undertaken while developing the new strategic policy and actions underneath this. The policy was developed through extensive stakeholder engagement, including a full public consultation and direct discussions with the Diverse Experiences Advisory Panel, the Equality and Human Rights Forum, Mental Health Leads Network, Professional Advisors Group, and Stakeholder Engagement Group.

A series of workshops run in collaboration with Public Health Scotland informed the Outcomes framework featured in the Strategy – these were attended by hundreds of people representing a wide range of organisations. Our public consultation received nearly 500 responses, and an independent analysis of these has been published online. We also held a series of consultation events in Summer 2022 that were attended by nearly 300 people representing 117 organisations. A wide variety of other ad hoc engagement was conducted alongside this, including with people with lived experience.

A first draft of the Strategy was shared with over 150 stakeholders in January 2023. The final draft of the Strategy has built on the feedback we received, with extensive changes made based on stakeholder comments.