Chamber and committees

We recognise the impact that the COVID-19 measures will be having on children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing. We are taking a number of steps to understand those impacts, and take action to address them.

We established a Covid-19 Children and Families Collective Leadership Group to review regular intelligence on children, young people and families with vulnerabilities, identify issues requiring action, and to provide local and national leadership in delivering a response.

A weekly data collection has been established to provide intelligence to the Leadership Group, bringing together intelligence from the 32 Chief Officer Groups, national agencies and delivery partners, including the third sector, Police Scotland and the NHS. Three evidence and intelligence reports were published in April, May and July which provided an overview of the research evidence about the impact of COVID-19 on children and families available at the time and reported on service responses based on intelligence gathered from local partnerships and third sector organisations. The July report can be found here: https://www.gov.scot/publications/children-young-people-families-covid-19-evidence-intelligence-report/ .

We have also established the Mental Health Research Advisory Group which is following research developments to understand the medium and long term impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on mental health and will help us to put evidence-based services and support in place to meet the mental health needs of the population.

In addition, in response to the mental health impacts of Covid-19 we will publish a Transition and Recovery Plan in Autumn 2020. The plan has been developed in partnership with mental health stakeholders and informed by emerging evidence, including a variety of sources that explore the impact on children, young people and families. It will lay out a set of actions to support population mental health, respond to distress and renew mental health services.

Schools have a key role to play in supporting children’s and young people’s mental health. During this pandemic, the Scottish Government has engaged with every education authority in Scotland to ensure that mental health support is currently in place as well as appropriate support in place for the return to school.

The Scottish Government continues to prioritise the support for children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing through support for school staff in responding to children’s needs; and also the counselling through schools programme. It is expected that the access to school counselling service commitment will be in place by the end of October 2020.

As part of Programme for Government 2018 we committed to have an additional 250 school nurses in place by the end of 2022, the first cohort of students commenced in 2019-20 and we expect a further 50 students to commence in the 20-21 academic year. Local authorities also confirmed that where required, significant family support was also in place.