SEC/05/16

Minutes of the Seventeenth Meeting of the Cross Party Group on Mental Health held in CR2 on 3 December at 12.30pm

1.PRESENT

Malcolm Chisholm MSP (Convenor); Shane Buckeridge; Alison Cairns; Jude Clarke; Jackie Clark; Susan Donnelly; Gordon Johnston; Toni Giugliano; Laura Hudson; Linda Hamilton; Michael-John De La Haye; Tom Jennings; Willie McFadyen; Ronnie Millar; Alastair Moodie; Lynda Morrison; Rob Murray;Tanya Rhodes; Aiveen Ryan; Mahmud Al-Gailani and Emma Youens.

In attendance
Karen Addie (Minutes)
Alice Gentle, RCN
Jess Davidson, NHS Lothian
2.APOLOGIES
Apologies for absence were received from: Mark McDonald MSP; Alison McInnes MSP; Shaben Begum; Alastair Cook; Sarah Eley; Laura Gibson; Andy McCann; Malky Kane; Traci Kirkland; Belinda Hacking; Tony McLaren; Hamish McLeod, Isobel Kerr and Brian Magee.
3. MINUTES OF THE MEETING (AND AGM) ON 23 SEPTEMBER 2015
The minutes of the previous meeting were accepted as an accurate record.
4.NURSING AT THE EDGE
Alice Gentle and Jess Davidson gave short presentations to the group about their work (circulated with the minutes).
In the discussion that followed members of the CPG asked questions:
Jude Clarke asked who can access the service Jess Davidson works for and how do people know it exists, she was particularly keen to see if something similar was available in Forth Valley. Jess answered by saying there is a 24/7 hour nursing service in the Forth Valley custody suites at Falkirk and Stirling. Jess agreed the police need to be proactive about the mental health needs of people in custody and her own service is heavily reliant on the vulnerability questions the custody officer asks. The nurse on duty can try to be aware of who all is in the custody suite at any one time.
Gordon Johnston asked how the good practice examples highlighted in Alice’s presentation can be rolled out elsewhere. He asked if it is likely the service in the custody suite could be rolled out to other places where there are vulnerable adults.
Alice said they haven’t measured the success of their projects due to difficulties in collecting meaningful data and also it is hard to measure how people feel.
All agreed succession planning is very important if these projects are to survive and more generally nursing has to continue to be attractive as a profession. The projects are not about creating new services they are primarily about connecting what is already in place.
There was a brief discussion about the difficulties of recruiting medical staff to forensic examination suites, particularly doctors, as there is so much court time involved.
Alastair Moodie asked if the CPG could hear from a representative from the police at a future meeting about their role in improving the services available for people with mental health problems who are in crisis. There is great potential to learn from the NHS Lothian service.
Alastair also asked how this ties in with health inequalities, in particular, the early years and prevention agenda covered at the last CPG. Jess Davidson said she would very much welcome offers from other people who have services her clients could benefit from. Alice Gentle confirmed this is only one part of the puzzle.
The group went on to talk about people who get a poor response from police, for example, if they have mental health problems and have also been drinking.
There was a brief discussion about the Community Triage pilot project which has proved that providing the police with somewhere to take people in distress for assessment (not an acute hospital) results in less use of police cells as places of safety and better outcomes for the people involved.
In terms of training, Aiveen Ryan informed the group that she is involved in mental health first aid training and has trained both police and prison officers who respond really well to having new skills they can use immediately. Jess Davidson emphasised there needs to be an appetite for this at a high level in the police and she hoped the new Chief Constable for Scotland would be able to bring about some changes in this regard.
Willie McFadyen asked about people who end up in custody who are deaf and he wondered whether any of the staff were trained up in sensory impairment.
Jess said they had not thought of this but thanked Willie for bringing it to her attention. Alice agreed she would raise this with the RCN and Jess agreed to take it back to her own service.
Susan Donnelly said that this project fits well with the improvement agenda and there is a lot of benefit to be gained.
Jess Davidson said that it would be great to evaluate the project and measure, for example, how many adverse incidents were avoided. At the moment the cost reductions are measured in financial terms but not in human terms.
Malcolm Chisholm brought this part of the meeting to a close and thanked the two speakers for their presentations.

5.ANY OTHER COMPETENT BUSINESS
An email had been received from Lisa Berry, a postgraduate student on the full-time Postgraduate Diploma in Counselling & Psychotherapy, who is currently part of a campaign to encourage the University of Strathclyde to rescind their recent decision to suspend all future postgraduate counselling courses from 2016 onwards. This campaign is gaining much international support, including students, academics, counsellors, agencies and other institutions. It has also received open support from PCT (Person-Centred Therapy Scotland) and PCU (Psychotherapists & Counsellors Union).
There was a brief discussion about the situation. It was agreed Karen Addie would send the email from Lisa around the group for other organisations to decide whether they want to lend their support to the campaign.
The COSCA (Counselling and Psychotherapy in Scotland) response is attached to the minutes and the group can also see the BACP (British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy) response here:

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