Written question WQ84449

Improving mental health and well-being for everyone continues to be a priority for Welsh Government. However, I am aware that agricultural communities face particular challenges.

We have increased our investment in mental health services and in 2022/23 we will provide an additional £50 million to support mental health and well-being. Health boards are responsible for ensuring services meet the needs of their local communities, including rural communities, and NHS mental health services are available to anyone that meets the threshold to benefit from this level of support.

Suicide prevention has long been a priority for me and as part of the new funding agreed we are targeting additional funding to support this agenda, for example by improving suicide bereavement support. We want to ensure that wider service transformation has a focus on preventing suicide too and are working to improve crisis care and the establishment of the 111 mental health single points of contact.

I recognise that most people will not need specialist mental health services and we have significantly increased our investment in early intervention and prevention with a range of non-clinical support, particularly since the onset of the pandemic. This support is available to all and can be accessed both over the phone and online without a referral. This includes our 24/7 CALL Mental Health Advice Line, Silvercloud online Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and a range of third sector provided support.

To support those in the agricultural community particularly, we have invested £45,000 to develop Farmwell Wales, an information hub on personal and business resilience for farmers and their families. In the last six months, 2200 new users have accessed the FarmWell.wales and farmwell.cymru sites. Welsh Government funding has also been used to support the development of the FarmWell Wales website and hard copy directory, which has been sent to some 16,500 farm businesses.

The focus of our Farm Liaison Service (FLS) is to provide customers with consistent, accurate and professional guidance in respect of all farming and rural schemes and policy areas administered by Welsh Government. However, it also plays a crucial role in supporting farming families dealing with difficult situations such as a bereavement in the family or financial hardship. FLS staff work closely with the farming charities and regularly signpost farmers to these organisations for additional help if required.

A grant of £47,000 was awarded to the DPJ Foundation in 2019 to enable its 1-2-1 counselling service (Share the Load) to be extended into North Wales. The grant has also enabled the charity to offer free online Mental Health awareness training to individuals working in the agricultural sector, such as vets, feed merchants etc. – individuals/companies that come into contact with farmers on a daily basis. I recently visited the DPJ Foundation to discuss the important work of the charity including combatting the stigma around mental health which complements the work that we are doing more broadly to support mental health.