Health & Social Care Departmental sickness figures had been presented to the trade unions for the previous few years, and mental health issues had been a concern throughout that time.
A working group was set up to look at sickness matters in more depth and although it worked well in some ways, it fell by the wayside, and did not come up with any plans to address the incidence of mental illness in the workforce.
UNISON stewards felt that mental health problems were becoming more prevalent in the practice teams and believed it would be useful to survey members to get a better picture of the issues.
As the Health & Social Care department is large, we decided to restrict the survey in the first instance to UNISON members in the practice teams and mental health teams, as these were the areas we had most concerns about.