GFTU BGCM 2019 Minutes

Conference, to tackle poor mental health, to make mental health a priority in

everyone’s workplace, to ensure no worker is left to suffer in silence please

support this motion. (Applause) .

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. Can I have a seconder, please, for that

motion.

BRO CHRIS WILSON (Voice): President, Conference, Chris Wilson, Voice, the

Union of Education Professionals. I am very pleased to second this important

motion brought before this conference by Community Union. This is indeed a

critical issue for all trade unionists wherever we may stand in the broad trade

union movement, whatever profession or employment we may work in. What I

would like to do, President, is just to locate this critical motion in a wider social

context and just to share some facts, some figures to show that the issue of

mental health is, of course, one for the workplace, but even more than that it is

one for the whole of the community all around us, just a few supporting facts.

The Royal College of Psychiatry has reported that income for mental health

trusts is significantly lower now in real terms than it was five years ago. £105

million has been sucked out of public funding and a consequence of that is

increased pressures on our members and our members’ families. In addition,

the TUC has reported that in 2013 in terms of mental health doctor provision

there was one mental health doctor for 186 patients. In 2018, according to the

TUC, that is now one mental health doctor for every 253 patients.

It is just as bad, President, if we look at the position with mental health nurses.

In 2013 there were 29 patients for every single mental health nurse. Now that

figure has increased to 39 patients. This is the real impact of austerity and this

affects real people, our members in our unions, our communities, our people.

These are the ones who are bearing the brunt of this appalling reduction of

provision. But what, for me, is most shocking of all, genuinely disturbing, is the

increase, the recorded increase, in suicides and I read only this morning that in

London since 2013 amongst teenagers and young people (and many of those

young people would be students, I would guess, members of my own union,

Voice, as an education union) have increased since 2013 by 107%, 107% and

across England and Wales the equivalent figure, by way of comparison, is an

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