Seòmar agus comataidhean

Through the Community Mental Health and Wellbeing Supports and Services Framework, we are providing local authorities with £15 million per annum to fund community-based mental health supports for children, young people, their families and their carers. North Ayrshire Council’s share of this year’s funding is £360,000 and Inverclyde Council’s is £192,000.

In North Ayrshire, the following supports and services for children and young people are delivered through the funding:

• Family-Centred Wellbeing Service: A multi-agency, strengths-focussed, community-based assessment and support service for families with children aged 5-12.
• Aberlour Sustain Service: Offers support to families with children aged 5-12 experiencing a range of challenges, including poverty, isolation, mental health and wellbeing issues, self-esteem, and anxiety.
• Crisis Counselling: Works with children and young people aged 5-24 who need very specific response methods to permit them to relate their emotional and mental health difficulties in age-specific ways and enable them to develop coping strategies and support them through challenging situations.
• Therapeutic Services For Care-Experienced Children And Young People: Play therapy, music therapy, dance therapy and art therapy for children and young people aged 5-26. These approaches have proved successful in addressing significant trauma and have enabled young people to develop coping strategies, self-regulate and develop sustainable skills.
• Mental Health And Wellbeing Project Delivery Officers: ‘Your Resilience’ sessions for multiple youth groups and positive mental wellbeing sessions alongside youth workers, via the mobile youth centre, ensuring young people who are geographically isolated have access to supports and services.
• Penumbra Self-Harm Project: Supports primary schools to continue to embed the ‘My Body My Way’ resource, runs parent support groups and workshops on how to deal with self-harm, and provides therapeutic support for children and young people displaying self-harming behaviours. For those aged 10-24.
• Bespoke Mental Health And Wellbeing: Delivering bespoke co-produced intervention with families who are currently under either voluntary or statutory measures with social work or the children and families team.

In Inverclyde, the following supports and services for children and young people are delivered through the funding:

• Inverclyde Emotional Wellbeing Triage Team: An inter-agency team of children and young people’s mental health services. Children, young people and families only tell their story once as the referral is handled by professionals on their behalf.
• Action For Children Wellbeing Service: This is a preventative mental health service aimed at P7 pupils at risk of non-attendance due to anxiety-based issues through transition to secondary education.
• Barnardo’s Wellbeing Support Worker Service: This service works with children and young people with additional support needs and their families to build parental capacity in response to the child’s developmental, social, and emotional needs.
• Cygnets Programme: This programme is aimed at parents and carers who are supporting children and young people experiencing difficulties due to autism spectrum condition.
• Children And Young People’s Participation Service: Workshops are being piloted in education establishments to gain the views of children and young people who have completed or are undergoing work with mental health and wellbeing services.

It is not possible for us to break down the amount spent on each of the above supports and services as local authorities are not required to provide us with this information under the terms of the grant.

In the first year of the Communities Mental Health and Wellbeing Fund for adults in 2021-2022, we funded 38 projects supporting adults living in North Ayrshire and 20 projects supporting adults living in Inverclyde.

In North Ayrshire these were:

It is an engineering decision on areas of risk when completing a Single Building Assessment. The Assessment is a whole building approach, and fire engineers highlight areas of risk to ensure safety for homeowners.

Grant payments are generally issued within 5 working days of the returned signed letter being received. This applies to initial and other grant payments in this programme.

No Single Building Assessments are paused. We are in receipt of multiple SBA reports that are undergoing technical review and due diligence.

ScotRail does not record passenger complaints data by region or local authority area, but by rail route. The following table shows ScotRail’s complaints data for routes which serve the South Scotland region from 1 April 2022:

16 buildings are now in delivery stage with a further 11 buildings finalising applications. We have expanded the pilot to 27 buildings in order to capture an additional building attached to an original pilot building.

The Scottish Government does not hold data on the current average waiting time for a care home place.

Information on the number of delayed hospital discharges by reason for delay (including care home placement) and length of delay is available on the Public Health Scotland website (See Excel download for standard delays, tab 4) :

Delayed discharges in NHSScotland monthly - Figures for September 2022 - Delayed discharges in NHSScotland monthly - Publications - Public Health Scotland

However, this will not include those awaiting a care home placement who are in the community, nor those awaiting a placement for whom their discharge is not delayed.

In the programme to date this has been raised twice with regard to buildings participating in the pilot. As part of the building assessment programme we have had discussions with fire engineers when they have raised concerns regarding carparks in buildings.

We have made 18 payments so far to 15 buildings, with 10 currently under assessment with a partial payment and 5 with full payment and assessment having concluded. All buildings with cladding concerns have and will continue to be offered fully funded assessments.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-11301 answered on 21 October 2022. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers .