Party representatives from Belfast and Maghera attended the launch of the 123 GP campaign in the Long Gallery, Stormont, to highlight the need for more mental health counselling services in GP practices.

Organised by the Mental Health Rights Campaign the 123 GP initiative is designed to secure three urgent service changes:

1. Funding: to ensure that all GPs in Northern Ireland draw down the money currently available to fund counselling services
   
2. Training: That all trainee GPs undertake community based mental health  placements and that all practicing GPs undergo mandatory professional mental health training
3. Available Expertise: Professionals with mental health expertise such as mental health social workers or CPNs to be based in GP practices and to work as part of the primary care team

Support

Speaking at the event Joanne Lowry welcomed the initiative and pledged the Party’s full support to the campaigners. She also called on additional support and counselling to be made available for the relatives and carers of people with mental health problems, identifying what she called “a hidden and often forgotten group of people”.

Joanne also called for GPs to become direct employees of the NHS rather than independent contractors thus ensuring that practice based mental health counselling services could be guaranteed rather than be left as an optional add on.

Mental Health Facts

• Currently , only two -thirds of GP practices have in house mental health counselling
• Existing services can only provide a limited response
• 4 out of 10 GP appointments are mental health related
• Only 5% of our health budget is spent on mental health services
• In England and Wales that figure is 11% – more than double
• Currently we spend £2.95p per person on mental health

For more information on the 123 GP campaign log on to

https://www.facebook.com/MentalHealthRights/

Belfast City Council’s decision to allocate upwards of £200,000 to ‘bonfire diversionary projects’ has been criticised as little more than a sectarian carve up coming at a time when the city needs serious and sustained investment in  health and well being projects, in jobs and in its young people.

“It is appalling that as we come to terms with the news of ten drug related deaths over the Christmas period, an increasing reliance of food banks, rising fuel poverty and some of the highest levels of social deprivation that public money is squandered in this manner”, Workers Party representative Joanne Lowry said.

“It beggars belief that with all these problems on our doorstep that some city councillors can turn a blind eye to the levels of human misery that exist locally in favour of a rave in the Falls Park and a big night out in Woodvale”, she said

“People in West Belfast have the lowest life expectancy in Northern Ireland, 34% of local children live in poverty or in low income families, more than 40% of houses are in fuel poverty meaning that people can’t afford to heat them and the number of local people suffering with mental health problems is up to three times higher than in other areas”, Joanne said.

“Add to that the problems of homelessness, addiction and low educational attainment and the very idea that these should take second place to a rave and a concert is deeply offensive”, Joanne added.

“The promise of Sinn Fein Lord Mayor Deirdre Hargey to build a “…healthy, harmonious and prosperous society” will mean nothing to people facing hardship and hopelessness when they see the resources that could have made a difference to their lives, and the lives of their children, frittered away on a musical one night stand”.

” People might say that these councillors have got heir priorities wrong: but have they? Quite clearly ordinary people, their prospects and their quality of life were never their priority in the first place”, concluded Joanne

The SPAR supermarket chain, has been asked to distance itself from the anti-abortion views of its majority shareholder, the Ardbarron Trust.

Workers Party representatives Gemma Weir and Joanne Lowry have criticised the Ardbarron Trust for the submission it made to Westminster’s Women and Equalities Committee last month.

“The Trust wrote to the Committee last month emphasising its opposition to abortion services and calling for no change in the law”, they said.

“Northern Ireland is still dominated by socially conservative voices and these continue to have an adverse and traumatising effect on local women.

“The Northern Ireland Assembly does not trust women to make choices about their own bodies and their own fertility. Now we have the majority shareholder in one of our best known convenience stores trying to control women’s choices and health options”. the pair said

“The SPAR chain must act quickly to distance itself from the views of the Ardbarron Trust”, said Gemma and Joanne

“Local Spar shoppers, and indeed all those who work for the company, need to know that these shareholders are pursuing this anti-choice agenda”

“The Workers Party recognises that women have the right to control their own bodies, including their fertility, and to pursue all reproductive choices. This is fundamental to any reasonable concept of gender equality in order to achieve full political, social, and economic equality with men”, they concluded.