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Written Question
Mental Health Services: Civil Society
Monday 18th March 2024

Asked by: Stephen Morgan (Labour - Portsmouth South)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps she is taking to support charitable organisations providing mental health services to those in need.

Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)

The Department recognises the valued contribution that mental health and suicide prevention voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations make in supporting people with their mental health.

During the pandemic, we provided £10.2 million of additional funding to support mental health charities, including Samaritans and the Campaign Against Living Miserably, and over £34 million to organisations supporting people who experience loneliness.

More recently, we announced that 79 organisations across the country have been allocated funding through the £10 million suicide prevention grant fund. These organisations, from local, community-led organisations through to national, are delivering a broad and diverse range of activity that will prevent suicides and save lives.

We have also announced that £8 million is being made available for 24 early support hubs across the country, a number of which will be run by voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations.


Written Question
Chess: Finance
Monday 18th March 2024

Asked by: Thangam Debbonaire (Labour - Bristol West)

Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, with reference to his Department's press release entitled Major investment to transform future of English chess announced, published on 22 August 2023, whether he plans to assess the impact of funding chess tables on (a) levels of loneliness and (b) people's problem solving skills.

Answered by Jacob Young - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities)

85 local authorities that received Levelling Up Parks Fund funding were invited to apply for the chess tables funding. In total, 55 local authorities applied for the funding. We have provided funding to those 55 local authorities to install 99 chess tables across England.

We have asked local authorities to consider how the location they choose creates new opportunities, helps to strengthen relationships, builds local social cohesion and provides opportunities for people to come together in a joint activity.

Prior to the announcement of funding, we engaged stakeholders across Government, as well as local authorities and the English Chess Federation.

Local authorities know their communities best and are best placed to manage the use and assess the effects of the chess tables locally, if they choose to do so.

Any decisions to provide chess sets are for local authorities to take.

Further announcements will be set out in the usual way.


Written Question
Rural Areas: Mental Health Services
Thursday 29th February 2024

Asked by: Steve Reed (Labour (Co-op) - Croydon North)

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to the Fourth Report of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee of Session 2022-23 on Rural Mental Health, HC248, published on 9 May 2023, what progress his Department has made on implementing the recommendations in the section entitled Rural mental health service provision, policy and strategy development.

Answered by Robbie Moore - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

We remain committed to supporting thriving rural communities, as set out in our report Unleashing Rural Opportunity, published in June 2023.

Since the launch of the EFRA Committee’s inquiry in 2021, considerable progress has been made to help ensure access to mental health services in rural areas. The Government published its Response to the EFRA Committee Report on Rural Mental Health in October 2023.

The response recognised that people living and working in rural areas may face specific challenges in accessing the mental health services that they need and set out the various actions being taken forward to address mental health needs.

Key actions include:

  • Publication of the Suicide prevention strategy for England: 2023 to 2028 in September 2023, which set out ambitions over the next five years to reduce suicide rates, improve support for people who have self-harmed, and improve support for people bereaved by suicide. The strategy also identifies actions to tackle known risk factors, several of which are relevant for agricultural and veterinary workers, including financial difficulty and economic adversity, and social isolation and loneliness, while also embedding multiple actions to tackle emerging means of suicide.

  • The launch of the Department for Health and Social Care’s £10 million Suicide Prevention Grant Fund in August 2023. This was to support the suicide prevention voluntary, charity and social enterprise sector to deliver activity that helps meet the increased demand for support, and to embed preventive activity that can help to prevent suicides and stem the flow into crisis services. A list of organisations that have been awarded funding will be published soon.

  • As committed to in the NHS Long Term Plan, published in 2019, we are continuing work to improve and widen access to care for children and adults needing mental health support. Over the 12 months to December 2023, 750,000 children and young people aged under 18 were supported through NHS-funded mental health services (with at least one contact) - a 31% increase since March 2021.

  • Additionally, we are ahead of schedule on rolling out Mental Health Support Teams in schools and colleges. We achieved our original ambition of covering 25% of pupils in England a year earlier than planned and we expect this to increase to 4.2 million pupils, or 44% of the pupil population, by March 2024. We have plans to go further, extending coverage to at least 50% of pupils by the end of March 2025.

To help improve the service and support on offer to farmers we will make up to £500,000 available to deliver projects that support mental health in the farming sector. This will build on the support already on offer through the Farming Resilience Fund, which has benefitted over 19,000 farmers to date.


Written Question
Suicide: Men
Thursday 29th February 2024

Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps she is taking with Cabinet colleagues to help tackle male suicide.

Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)

The Suicide Prevention Strategy for England, published on 11 September 2023, is a cross-Government strategy with over 100 actions that we believe will reduce the suicide rate within five years, with initial reductions observed within two and a half years. We have identified middle-aged men as a priority group within the strategy, and many of the actions will support suicide prevention in men by addressing the common risk factors for this group, such as a history of drug or alcohol misuse, family or relationships problems, and social isolation and loneliness. We have worked across departments to develop this strategy and will continue to do so, in order to deliver the actions within it.

In addition, on 23 August 2023 we launched a £10 million Suicide Prevention Grant Fund to support voluntary community and social enterprise organisations in England in meeting the demand for their services to support people experiencing suicidal thoughts, or approaching a mental health crisis. Applications were encouraged from charities to support middle-aged men and other groups of concern. The fund will run to March 2025, and we expect to start making this funding available to successful applicants very soon.


Written Question
Mental Health Services: Civil Society
Tuesday 30th January 2024

Asked by: Andrew Lewer (Conservative - Northampton South)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps she is taking to support voluntary sector providers of mental health services.

Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)

Since 2020, the Department provided £10.2 million of additional funding to support mental health charities, including Samaritans and the Campaign Against Living Miserably, and over £34 million to organisations supporting people who experience loneliness. The Department also invested £5.4 million to support suicide prevention through 113 voluntary and community sector organisations, through the Suicide Prevention Grant Fund. This was part of the Government's unprecedented £750 million package of support for the voluntary sector during the pandemic, which benefited over 14,000 charities. In addition, the Suicide Prevention Grant Fund will run from 2023 to March 2025 to support voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations to deliver suicide prevention activity.


Written Question
Loneliness
Thursday 25th January 2024

Asked by: Tracey Crouch (Conservative - Chatham and Aylesford)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether the Mental Health Bill will have provisions to help tackle loneliness.

Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)

The Government published a draft Mental Health Bill on 23 June 2023 and it remains our intention to bring forward a Mental Health Bill when Parliamentary time allows. The Bill is designed to reform the Mental Health Act 1983, which exists to be able to compel people to stay in hospital and be treated for a severe mental illness. The legislative reforms contained in the Bill aim to provide greater autonomy to individuals to inform their care and treatment, including children and young people. They also aim to ensure that inpatients, including those detained under the Mental Health Act, have improved support to access their rights under the Act. The Bill therefore does not include provisions to tackle loneliness.

The Department of Culture, Media and Sport launched the world’s first government strategy on loneliness in October 2018. It set out a clear vision for this country to be a place where we can all have strong social relationships.  The Government’s work to tackle loneliness focuses on reducing the stigma associated with loneliness; supporting organisations across society to take action; and improving the evidence base on loneliness.


Written Question
Loneliness
Thursday 25th January 2024

Asked by: Tracey Crouch (Conservative - Chatham and Aylesford)

Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what progress her Department has made on tackling loneliness.

Answered by Stuart Andrew - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)

Many people experience loneliness and social isolation, and the Government is committed to reducing the stigma associated with loneliness, and building a more connected society. Government, local councils, health systems and voluntary and community sector organisations all have an important role to play in achieving this.

Since publishing the first ever government Strategy for Tackling Loneliness and appointing the world’s first Minister for Loneliness in 2018, we have invested almost £80 million in tackling loneliness. These interventions include a national communications campaign that aims to reduce the stigma of loneliness, which has reached at least 25 million people across the country. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport is also delivering the ‘Know Your Neighbourhood Fund’ to boost volunteering and reduce loneliness in 27 disadvantaged areas across England. We have also brought together over 750 people from across the public, private and charity sectors through our Tackling Loneliness Hub, where members can learn from events and workshops, share the latest research and collaborate on new initiatives.

Last March, we published the fourth annual report of our Tackling Loneliness Strategy. It contains over 60 new and ongoing commitments from 11 government departments. So far, we have made progress against at least 46 of these commitments and at least 7 have been completed. Due to the nature of the commitments many have now been incorporated into business as usual. The fifth annual report will provide a full update on commitments, and is due to be published in March.


Written Question
Loneliness: Rural Areas
Monday 22nd January 2024

Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)

Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what discussions she has had with (a) farming unions and (b) other organisations on tackling (i) loneliness and (ii) isolation for (A) widowed farmers and (B) other people who live alone in rural areas.

Answered by Stuart Andrew - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)

Many people experience loneliness and social isolation, and the government is committed to building a more connected society. We know that social isolation can be particularly challenging for those in rural areas, and as outlined in the fourth Annual Tackling Loneliness Report, the Government has introduced a number of measures to provide support for rural communities and farmers. As loneliness is a devolved policy area, these programmes pertain to England only.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) has committed to a range of measures. This includes providing funding for organisations and initiatives that seek to tackle loneliness in rural areas, like Action with Communities in Rural England (ACRE). Additionally, DEFRA has made tackling loneliness an objective for the Farmers Welfare Forum and has brought together 15 rural community organisations working to tackle loneliness to better understand the issue and target support.

In addition, in March 2023 the Department for Culture, Media and Sport launched the Know Your Neighbourhood Fund with £30 million of funding designed to widen participation in volunteering and tackle loneliness in 27 disadvantaged areas across England, including 5 predominantly rural local authority areas.

Updates on the progress of these commitments will be published in the fifth annual report in March.


Written Question
Social Prescribing: Loneliness
Wednesday 17th January 2024

Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment she has made of the effectiveness of social prescribing at reducing levels of loneliness and social isolation.

Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

The Department recognises the value of social prescribing in tackling loneliness. Since 2018, the Government and its partners have invested over £80 million in tackling loneliness.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport published a report on 4 September 2023, Exploring interventions to tackle loneliness, summarising what interventions work to tackle loneliness and a report exploring the knowledge of professionals working to evaluate loneliness interventions. In this report, it was concluded that more evaluations are needed to determine the effect social prescribing has on loneliness.


Written Question
Loneliness and Social Prescribing
Wednesday 20th December 2023

Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will make tackling loneliness and social isolation a public health priority.

Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)

We recognise that loneliness and social isolation can affect many people and impact on their health and wellbeing. In October 2018 the Department of Culture, Media and Sport published the world’s first ever cross-government strategy to tackle loneliness ‘A connected society: a strategy for tackling loneliness’.

Social prescribing is a key component of the National Health Service’s Universal Personalised Care and can work well for those who are lonely or socially isolated. Social Prescribing link workers take a holistic approach to people’s health and wellbeing. They connect people to community groups and statutory services for practical and emotional support. Social prescribing can work well for those who are socially isolated. Social prescribing activities are commissioned locally, utilising community assets often in the Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise sector.