Mental Health and Well-being

Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd at 3:12 pm on 30 September 2020.

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Photo of Vaughan Gething Vaughan Gething Labour 3:12, 30 September 2020

Thank you. We'll continue with the implementation of our all-age loneliness and social isolation strategy, which we published in February, but more specifically, we do take account of surveys and evidence from ourselves and partners about the direct impact upon mental health and well-being of loneliness and isolation, which is part of the reality of the measures we've had to take to keep Wales safe and to protect the maximum number of lives. The measures we've taken in local restrictions, where we've had to unfortunately take apart the extended household bubbles—I recognise that there's a consequence to that. So, what we have done in terms of working with partners is both on the immediate response to the pandemic and actually planning for the future. Our work has focused in the immediate stage on access to tier 0 and tier 1 support—that's the low-level intervention and support—and the current improvements include strengthening the core mental health helpline, the launch of the young persons mental health toolkit, and SilverCloud, which is an online cognitive behavioural therapy programme. We're also providing additional funding to the third sector to help fill gaps in this time of provision.

We're also looking ahead to the future and understanding that we expect an increased level of anxiety within the public at large that we may need to do something about, what we're going to be able to do in terms of access to specialist mental health services, but also, we need to actively think about what we're going to be able to do in terms of the mental health and support needs of our staff, in particular front-line health and social care. The impact of what our staff have had to do to keep people alive, safe and well is something that affects some people now, but we all know there's a well-known evidence base that some of that impact won't manifest itself for a period of time. So, during the next stage, the next term of this Welsh Parliament, we're going to need to have planned for and to understand how we can help to support our staff, and that's why we've already introduced additional support mechanisms across Wales for staff within health and social care.