Mental health and wellbeing strategy - delivery plan and workforce action plan: progress update and next steps

Challenges and Lessons Learnt

Although many actions within the current Delivery Plan and Workforce Action Plan have been successfully completed, there are some actions where progress has been slower. These have been impacted by a number of contextual challenges, including funding and capacity and the Leadership Board has been updated on these.

Public finances remain under significant pressure. As a result, the Scottish Government has had to make difficult budget decisions in each of the last three financial years. This has affected how priorities are set internally, impacted service capacity, and the level of funding to delivery partners who rely on central funding as a proportion of their income. Since the publication of the Delivery Plan and Workforce Action Plan in November 2023, these financial constraints have limited the ability to carry out some planned actions to original timescales.

There has been an accompanying impact of fiscal pressures on wider local budgets. These have necessitated difficult decisions, which have in turn had the potential to impact mental health supports and services. Services which impact the social determinants of mental health have also risk being affected, which may have a longer-term, detrimental impact on demand. Ongoing capacity concerns were also prevalent across all delivery partners, including within the overall mental health workforce. Given the value of security of funding streams, Scottish Government has moved to baseline some key budgets both for Boards and local authorities - an example being the move to integrate £15 million per annum for provision of community-based support for children and young people into the local government budget settlement. Recognising the particular pressures on the third sector, the Scottish Government has also sought to provide early confirmation of grant support in 2025-2026 and used the Fairer Funding pilot to offer security of funding for some key frontline supports - including the Communities Mental Health and Wellbeing Fund for Adults - until 2027. However, it is recognised that local budgets remain very challenging.

Members of the Leadership Board have also noted some challenges related to the form of the current Delivery Plans - for instance, in some individual actions, the end point felt unclear. This has made it difficult to understand the extent of the progress that has been made in some cases. There was also felt to be a degree of duplication between the Delivery Plan and the Workforce Action Plan. We will take this on board for the next iteration.

When the original Delivery Plan and Workforce Action Plan were published in November 2023, both documents had an initial 18-month lifespan. The original intention was to publish a new Delivery Plan and Workforce Action Plan in Spring 2025. However, the challenges described above, together with resourcing challenges within the Scottish Government and Local Government, have impacted the ability to meet that timeline in a meaningful way and we have agreed through the Leadership Board to revise these timelines to refresh our next Plan.

A revised timeline for publication is outlined below, alongside an improved approach to developing a refreshed Plan. This seeks to combat some of the challenges that we have experienced in delivery to date and will ensure that investment is effectively targeted towards where it will have most impact. In the interim, work will continue to deliver the current Delivery and Workforce Action Plans.