Developing a National Indicator Set for Infants, Children and Young People
Amongst other policy undertakings, Towards a Mentally Flourishing Scotland: Policy and Action Plan 2009-2011 sets out the need to develop “a national picture of mental wellbeing and mental health problems among infants, children and young people in Scotland” to assess progress in improving mental health and to monitor future trends.
The children and young people’s work is building on work already undertaken by NHS Health Scotland to develop a core set of national indicators for adult mental health. These provide a means of assessing and monitoring mental health and its context for Scotland’s adult population nationally over time. The indicators cover both the state of mental health (mental wellbeing and mental health problems) and the contextual factors associated with it.
NHS Health Scotland is now working to establish a similar set of mental health indicators for children and young people in line with the TAMFS commitment. A consultation document was issued in March 2010, supported by a consultation event held in Glasgow on 1 March 2010. NHS Health Scotland have assessed the consultation responses as part of the ongoing process of developing the proposed indicator set. In addition, to help support the consultation process, the University of Edinburgh’s Centre for Research on Families and Relationships (CRFR) undertook research to find out the views of children and young people on what affects their mental health. CRFR’s report (October 2010) is available at http://www.crfr.ac.uk/reports/rb%2052.pdf
The Indicators work is steered by an advisory group comprising a mix of stakeholders from NHS Health Scotland, SG, the NHS, the voluntary sector and academia. The project is expected to be complete in Summer 2011. For more detail on this project and on the adult indicators already developed, please see www.healthscotland.com/understanding/population/mental-health-indicators.aspx “