See Me Call for New Socio-Economic Duty to Take into Account the Experiences of People with Mental Health Issues

Posted by See Me, 21 September 2017

See Me has responded to the Scottish Government’s Consultation on the new Socio-Economic Duty for the public sector. This would mean that key public bodies (such as Local Authorities and the NHS) will have to think about how they can reduce poverty and inequality whenever they make decisions that affect the people they serve.

We have responded to highlight our belief that when decisions are made there should be emphasis on awareness of inequalities of outcome for people with experience of mental health issues. This means always considering things such as their physical health, the impact society has on mental health, the poor experiences in society that people with mental problems face, and the negative impact of mental health problems on income, employment, and access to services.

We also suggest that this should apply not just to the public sector, but to all services which are carried out for public bodies, even if the work is being carried out by private companies. We think this will stop public bodies from potentially outsourcing work to skirt the rules, especially as there is a lot of demand to meet targets with limited resources. If this doesn’t include all services carried out for public bodies, it could result in unfortunate consequences, which will affect the people in the most vulnerable situations in society.

The value of including lived experience, and working with people to design solutions and evaluate impact is also emphasised within our response. We also give our support for more decisions to be made locally, and to look at different ways that budgets can be worked out. One such way is Participatory Budgeting, which gets more people from the community involved in deciding how to spend public money. Another is Human Rights Based Budgeting, which means when deciding budgets it’s important to ensure the services provided meet people’s needs and enable people’s rights to be fulfilled.  However, these will only work if they are inclusive, particularly of those with lived experience of mental health issues, and audited to ensure this.

We feel that public bodies will require information in the form of short, accessible briefings to ensure they are aware of the issues particular groups of disadvantaged communities faced, so that these can be at the forefront of their minds during strategic decisions. They are also likely to require the hands-on support of other organisations to make the best use of the data that was available to them, including that which comes from people’s stories and experiences.

Read See Me Scotland Response to the Scottish Government’s Socio-Economic Duty Consultation here.