Mental Health Waiting Lists

Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd at 2:31 pm on 23 March 2022.

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Photo of Lynne Neagle Lynne Neagle Labour 2:31, 23 March 2022

Thank you very much for that question, Jenny, and I'm very supportive of social prescribing as a way of linking people to community-based, non-clinical support, and regard such support as a really key part of our preventative agenda. You'll be aware that we have a programme for government commitment to have an all-Wales framework to support social prescribing. That framework is going to outline what best practice looks like in Wales, but very importantly is not going to dictate what is delivered in different communities, because there is already some excellent practice out there. My officials are currently engaging with a range of stakeholders on the proposed model, and that will be published then for formal consultation in May. And you'll be pleased to know that also, from April, our new health and social care regional integration fund is going to continue to support the social prescribing models that we know are so important.

Also, we're continuing to invest very heavily as a Government in lower level, tier 0 support, because, as you say, lots of people who seek referrals for their mental health don't actually need specialist support. So, we're continuing to invest in the call helpline. We're actually expanding—we've announced £7 million to expand the online cognitive behavioural therapy, SilverCloud, including expanding that to children. And we're looking at what more we can do with our increased funding over the next three years to actually boost that tier 0, lower level support to avoid difficulties escalating.