Part of 3. 2. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Health, Well-being and Sport – in the Senedd at 3:15 pm on 19 July 2017.
I agree that we need to consider how we make best use of professionals within the service, and outside the service as well. It’s a significant part of a GP’s caseload, actually, those sort of moderate to lower level mental health challenges that bring people through their doors. And it’s part of the reason why lots of primary care clusters are investing in counselling services with the resources that we’ve made available to them. Mental health and therapy services are some of the more significant and consistent areas, together with pharmacy, for that cluster investment. And it is about that general sense of well-being and how we actually address that as well. Sometimes, that is not a medical intervention. So, for example, when we think about social prescribing, much of that is actually about improving mental health and well-being as an alternative to, if you like, a formal talking therapy or, indeed, medication. That’s also why this Government has recommitted in our programme for government to undertaking a significant social prescribing pilot that we think will provide us with significant information on how to develop a service for the future that should make a real difference to mental health and well-being. And, obviously, we’ll look again, in a year or so, at the practice of Valleys Steps, which we think has made a real difference in this area already.