Mental Health and Wellbeing Leadership Board: delivery progress report 3 - February 2025
The third progress report (LB(25)03-03) assessing the delivery of the strategic actions found within the mental health and wellbeing strategy and accompanying delivery plan and workforce action plan, including a summary of identified risks and issues.
Actions Determined to be ‘Off Track’ or ‘Delivery Date Missed with Risk’
Ref: 18
Action: A Mental Health Officer (MHO) Workforce Capacity Oversight group has been set up with partners in social work to help address the shortfall in MHO capacity caused by increased service demand, as well as recruitment and retention challenges. The Group meetings have been paused awaiting completion of mapping exercise being led by Office of the Chief Social Work Adviser (OCSWA), COSLA and Social Work Scotland (SWS) officials.
Lead: SG & COSLA
Reason for RAG: Whilst the group has been established and a mapping exercise undertaken, significant progress has not been made in addressing shortfalls. Risk is indicated due to the continued risk conferred by having insufficient MHOs and it currently remains unclear exactly how this will be resolved. However, it is noted that this is a long- term systemic issue, that could not realistically have been resolved over the lifespan of the plan.
Mitigating Actions:
Since the beginning of the plan there have been a number of developments relevant to supporting MHO work. This includes the agreement of the National Social Work Agency (NSWA) under which it is anticipated MHO workforce concerns will be considered . How this connects to any existing work on MHOs may be informed by the mapping work the capacity group are undertaken. This work should support the issue being addressed in the longer-term.
Beyond the MHO Capacity Group work relevant work has also been progressed for example 400k that has been given to 5 partnerships (February) to enhance MHO workforce capacity as part of the delayed discharge improvement work and, through the Joint Social Services Task Force (JSST), work has been commissioned through Iriss (Improving Lives – Social Service Workforce) to look at the how learning and improvement from the Highland MHO recruitment model in partnership with Robert Gordon University can be utilised in other parts of Scotland.