More than 950 mental health workers recruited for frontline roles

(Adds Lib Dem response in final five pars)

The Scottish Government has exceeded a commitment to recruit more mental health staff across frontline roles, it confirmed on Tuesday.

New figures showed that 958 full-time equivalent mental health workers have been taken on for deployment across Scotland’s hospitals, GP surgeries, police station custody suites and prisons.

A target of 800 members of staff had been set originally in the Government’s Mental Health Strategy for 2017-27.

The workers will assist in providing appropriate mental health care in a variety of settings.

Mental wellbeing minister Kevin Stewart said the figures show “how seriously we are taking” the effort to tackle the issue of poor mental health.

Mr Stewart said: “I am pleased that we have exceeded our commitment and recruited almost 1,000 additional mental health professionals across these key settings.

“Mental illness is one of the major public health challenges in Scotland. Around one-in-three people are estimated to be affected by mental illness in any one year.

“We want a Scotland where we act on the knowledge that failing to recognise, prioritise and treat mental health problems costs not only our economy, but also harms individuals and communities.

“We have allocated nearly £84 million to enable recruitment to these posts and this has been achieved in spite of the unprecedented impacts of the pandemic on our health and social care services.”

However, the Scottish Liberal Democrats have suggested the figures have been inflated, and accused the Government of missing its commitment of 800 additional workers.

The party said the number of staff recruited to the four key settings identified in the strategy was, in fact, sitting at 625, with the remainder of the extra staff being placed in other roles, such as community workers.

Wendy Chamberlain, deputy leader for the Scottish Lib Dems, said: “It’s pretty low for the Scottish Government to roll in staff recruited for other settings and claim that this means they have met their target.

“Community workers and psychology practitioners have an important role to play but this is not what this target was for.

“Let’s be real about the human cost of this failure. People in crisis are continuing to suffer. Yet their Government’s first response is to spin the numbers and inflate the figures.”