- Asked by: Bruce Crawford, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 22 April 2004
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Current Status:
Answered by Malcolm Chisholm on 5 May 2004
To ask the Scottish Executive when the National Implementation Support Team, as referred to in Choose Life - A National Strategy and Action Plan to Prevent Suicide in Scotland, first met; on how many occasions it has met, and what issues were on its agenda.
Answer
Following a national recruitmentprocess in 2003, the Head of Implementation for Choose Life, Caroline Farquhar,took up post in January 2004. Arrangements are in hand to recruit three additionalmembers to the National Implementation Support Team.
- Asked by: Bruce Crawford, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 22 April 2004
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Current Status:
Answered by Malcolm Chisholm on 5 May 2004
To ask the Scottish Executive what action has been taken to ensure that reducing the rate of suicide is clearly on its agenda and that of its departments, as referred to in Choose Life - A National Strategy and Action Plan to Prevent Suicide in Scotland.
Answer
I refer the member to the answergiven to S2W-7696 on 5 May 2004. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for whichcan be found at
http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/webapp/search_wa.
- Asked by: Bruce Crawford, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 22 April 2004
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Current Status:
Answered by Malcolm Chisholm on 5 May 2004
To ask the Scottish Executive how many local self-help groups have been established, as referred to in Choose Life - A National Strategy and Action Plan to Prevent Suicide in Scotland.
Answer
It is not possible to identifywhich, nor how many, local self-help groups have been established as a result ofChoose Life. Each local action plan addresses support for local self-help groups.Guidance to local areas, which was issued in June 2003, made clear that an element of local ChooseLife funds is to be used to help establish and maintain local self-help groups.This is one of the aspects which the National Programme will be monitoring.
- Asked by: Bruce Crawford, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 22 April 2004
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Current Status:
Answered by Malcolm Chisholm on 5 May 2004
To ask the Scottish Executive what links have been developed between its strategy and action plan, Choose Life - A National Strategy and Action Plan to Prevent Suicide in Scotland, and its other policies and initiatives and what objectives have been achieved as a result.
Answer
A key objective of the firstphase of the Choose Life Implementation work (up until 2006) is to ensure that suicideprevention is on the agenda of Scottish Executive Departments and reflected in relevantpolicies. This is a key task for the Head of Implementation for Choose Life (appointedin January 2004).
For example, work is progressingwith:
- Scottish Executive Education Department on anti bullying initiatives and the promotion of mental health and wellbeing in schools.
- Scottish Executive Development Department on work relating to social exclusion, community mental health and wellbeing, inequalities and money advice.
- Scottish Executive Enterprise and Lifelong Learning Department on employability, in particular for those furthest from the employment market.
- Scottish Executive Justice Department, supporting the SPS in progressing suicide prevention in prisons.
- Health Department – development of improved mental health services, particularly responding to crisis.
Suicide Prevention is one of the key aims of the National Programme for Improving Mental Health and Well-Beingin Scotland. The National Programme is a key element of the Executive’sHealth Improvement Challenge, another example of cross - Departmental working.
- Asked by: Bruce Crawford, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 22 April 2004
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Current Status:
Answered by Malcolm Chisholm on 5 May 2004
To ask the Scottish Executive, with reference to Choose Life - A National Strategy and Action Plan to Prevent Suicide in Scotland, what performance management arrangements have been established to monitor the impact of the strategy and action plan on service provision.
Answer
Guidance was issued to each localarea in June 2003. This set out the requirements on local areas to produce a localsuicide prevention action plan by the end of December 2003. All local action planshave now been submitted, and have since been assessed by the Head of Implementationfor Choose Life.
Individual meetings have beenheld with all 32 local suicide prevention representatives. Local actions will besubject to further monitoring and performance management. This work will be undertakenby the Head of Implementation and the National Implementation Support Team.
In addition to this, an independentevaluation is being commissioned by the Scottish Executive to assess the impactof the first phase of the Choose Life Strategy and Action Plan. This evaluationwill report in 2006.
- Asked by: Bruce Crawford, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 22 April 2004
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Current Status:
Answered by Malcolm Chisholm on 5 May 2004
To ask the Scottish Executive when a national capacity for collection of data on suicide was established, as referred to in Choose Life - A National Strategy and Action Plan to Prevent Suicide in Scotland.
Answer
The establishment of a nationalcapacity for collection of data on suicide will be a key task for the National InformationManager for Choose Life. This post is one of the Choose Life National ImplementationSupport Team posts to be recruited shortly, and to which I referred in the answergiven to question S2W-7698. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for whichcan be found at:
http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/webapp/search_wa.
- Asked by: Bruce Crawford, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 22 April 2004
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Current Status:
Answered by Malcolm Chisholm on 5 May 2004
To ask the Scottish Executive how many local action plans have been established and when, as referred to in Choose Life - A National Strategy and Action Plan to Prevent Suicide in Scotland.
Answer
All 32 local action plans werereceived by the end of January 2004.
- Asked by: Bruce Crawford, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 22 April 2004
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Current Status:
Answered by Malcolm Chisholm on 5 May 2004
To ask the Scottish Executive when guidelines for the media were published, as referred to in Choose Life - A National Strategy and Action Plan to Prevent Suicide in Scotland.
Answer
The National Programme for ImprovingMental Health and Well-Being is working with the National Union of Journalists (NUJ)in Scotland to provide guidance for people working in the media onthe reporting and representation of mental health and suicide. The NUJ plan to launchthis guidance later this year.In addition to this, Samaritanspublished a helpful guide in June 2002 for the media to use when reporting suicide.The guidelines, which are available electronically via Samaritans’ website –
www.samaritans.org/know/media_guide.shtm,are aimed at those reporting suicide in any media from factual description to dramaticportrayal. The guidelines outline suicide facts, media myths, signs of suicide riskand recommend phrases to use when referring to suicide.
- Asked by: Bruce Crawford, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 22 April 2004
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Current Status:
Answered by Malcolm Chisholm on 5 May 2004
To ask the Scottish Executive how many local training programmes have been developed, as referred to in Choose Life - A National Strategy and Action Plan to Prevent Suicide in Scotland.
Answer
Guidance to local areas, whichwas issued in June 2003, identified the development of local multi-agency trainingas a priority area. Each local area action plan addresses how local training isto be taken forward.
In addition to local trainingwork, a national training strategy is currently being developed for Choose Life.The first element of this is the introduction of a community-based training coursefirst developed in Alberta, Canada called Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (ASIST).ASIST is a training and capacity building programme to help develop a long-termsustainable infrastructure for suicide prevention. The training enables participantsto be ready, willing and able to provide emergency first-aid to persons at riskof suicidal behaviour.
ASIST is by far the most widelyused, acclaimed and researched suicide intervention skills training in the world.It has been refined over a period of 20 years with feedback from over 400,000 participantsand 2,000 active trainers worldwide. Links have been established between ChooseLife in Scotland and Living Works Education, a highly respected trainingorganisation based in Alberta, Canada, which developed the ASIST training.
From April 25 till May 7 2004,two 1 - week ASIST training programmes are being held in Scotland; one in West Lothianand one in Glasgow. Forty-eight individuals from around Scotland arebeing trained to become ASIST trainers. This is the first wave of training ASISTinstructors in Scotland and further courses are planned.
- Asked by: Bruce Crawford, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Friday, 02 April 2004
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Current Status:
Answered by Lewis Macdonald on 4 May 2004
To ask the Scottish Executive what representations it has made to Her Majesty's Government in respect of how clause 76(5) of the UK Energy Bill provides for a transfer of functions in relation to "areas outside the territorial sea", in light of section 63 of the Scotland Act 1998 which enables transfer of functions "in or as regards Scotland", where "Scotland" includes the internal waters and territorial sea of the United Kingdom as are adjacent to Scotland.
Answer
The Scottish Executive maintains regular contact with Her Majesty's Government in respect of matters of mutual interest including the UK Energy Bill. The potential exercise of the powers that would be conferred by virtue of clause 85(5) of the bill - formerly clause 76(5) and which does not have a direct relationship with section 63 of the Scotland Act 1998 - is part of that contact.
