FOI 26-364 Wellbeing Policy and Staff Sickness
Freedom of Information Request
- Reference
- FOI 26-364 Wellbeing Policy and Staff Sickness
- Request Date
- 12 Aug 2026
- Response Date
- 09 Sep 2026
- Information Requested
Please can you provide the following, for the calendar years: 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, and 2026 to date, unless stated otherwise.
- Does the organisation currently have a staff mental health or wellbeing policy in place? If yes, please provide a copy of the policy or a link to where it is publicly available.
- The total number of employee sickness absence days recorded for mental health-related reasons, including stress, anxiety, depression, PTSD, trauma or work-related mental health issues, where recorded.
- The number of individual staff members who took sickness absence for mental health-related reasons.
- The total number of staff referred to occupational health, an employee assistance programme, counselling, therapy or other psychological support for mental health-related reasons, where recorded.
- Of those referrals, the number where the reason included stress, anxiety, depression, PTSD, trauma or work-related mental health, where recorded.
- What internal and/or external support is currently provided for employee mental health? Please specify whether each form of support is internal or external. This may include, but is not limited to, employee assistance programmes, occupational health, counselling, cognitive behavioural therapy, talking therapy, Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing, peer support, trauma-informed support, psychological wellbeing checks or other forms of support.
- The average waiting time for staff to access mental health support, including counselling, employee assistance programmes, occupational health or other psychological support, where recorded.
- The total annual spend on staff mental health support, employee assistance programmes, counselling, occupational health or other psychological support services, where recorded.
- The total number of employees in the organisation in each year.
Where held, and where disclosure would not risk identifying individuals, would it be possible to receive the data for questions 2, 3, 4 and 5 broken down by:
- Age band: 18-24, 25-34, 35-44, 45-54, 55-64 and 65 and over
- Gender: male, female, other
- Job role
- Location of unit or branch by the first half of the postcode
- Response
Does the organisation currently have a staff mental health or wellbeing policy in place? If yes, please provide a copy of the policy or a link to where it is publicly available.
Please see the attached copy of the current Wellbeing policy.
Some information has been redacted under section 38(1)(b) of the Freedom of Information Scotland Act 2002 where the information is considered personal information.
The total number of employee sickness absence days recorded for mental health-related reasons, including stress, anxiety, depression, PTSD, trauma or work-related mental health issues, where recorded.
The number of individual staff members who took sickness absence for mental health-related reasons.
Please see the attached spreadsheet, which provides:
- the total number of sickness absence hours recorded under the combined category “Anxiety/Stress/Depression”; and
- the number of individual employees recorded as absent under this category.
Important information to consider when interpreting this data:
- The information is recorded under the combined category “Anxiety/Stress/Depression”. We are unable to break this category down further or identify whether an absence was work-related.
- An employee counted within a calendar year may have been absent for any length of time. Where an absence continued from one calendar year into the next, the employee will be counted in both years. The annual employee figures should therefore not be added together to calculate a unique total across the full period.
- The information is not held in a format that enables a breakdown by age band or gender.
- Location and job group have been provided where possible. These have been grouped to reduce the risk of individuals being indirectly identified and to protect staff confidentiality.
- The 2026 figures cover January to July 2026 only and are therefore not directly comparable with the full calendar-year figures
In accordance with statistical disclosure control principles, where the number of incidents is fewer than five but greater that zero, figures have been suppressed and shown as *. This is because disclosure of very small numbers may increase the risk of individuals being identified when combined with other information that may be available. Due to the small number of transfers involved we are unable to break the information into individual years.
Where suppression has been applied, the exact figure is exempt from disclosure under section 38(1)(b) of FOISA (personal information), as disclosure could lead to the identification of individuals and would therefore contravene the data protection principles.
Information about employee counts is publicly available and can be found here: NHS Scotland workforce | Turas Data Intelligence
The total number of staff referred to occupational health, an employee assistance programme, counselling, therapy or other psychological support for mental health-related reasons, where recorded.
Of those referrals, the number where the reason included stress, anxiety, depression, PTSD, trauma or work-related mental health, where recorded.
The Scottish Ambulance Service does not hold a total number of staff referred to each service requested above. Information relating to referrals is gathered from a number of different internal and external wellbeing services. The data is not recorded in a way that identifies the total number of staff members referred to Occupational Health, an Employee Assistance Programme, counselling, therapy or other psychological support; nor can these referrals be broken down into a total number of those that were referred for the mental health reasons provided above.
As there cannot be a total figure determined, we cannot provide any breakdown by age, gender, job role or locality.
To provide the requested figures would require the Scottish Ambulance Service to manually review individual referrals and records and create a new dataset. FOISA provides a right of access to recorded information that is held; it does not require public authorities to create new information in order to answer a request. It is for this reason we have applied section 17 of the Freedom of Information Scotland Act 2002 as information not held.
What internal and/or external support is currently provided for employee mental health? Please specify whether each form of support is internal or external. This may include, but is not limited to, employee assistance programmes, occupational health, counselling, cognitive behavioural therapy, talking therapy, Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing, peer support, trauma-informed support, psychological wellbeing checks or other forms of support.
Information relating to the mental health and wellbeing support available to Scottish Ambulance Service staff is publicly available on our website within the response to FOI 26-266. In accordance with section 25(1) of FOISA, information which is otherwise reasonably accessible to the applicant is exempt from disclosure.
The published response can be accessed here: FOI 26-266 SAS Wellbeing Organisations
The average waiting time for staff to access mental health support, including counselling, employee assistance programmes, occupational health or other psychological support, where recorded.
The Scottish Ambulance Service does not hold recorded information on average waiting times across its wellbeing support services.
While referral activity is recorded for a number of services, average waiting-time information is not routinely recorded or reported centrally.
In accordance with section 17(1) of FOISA, the Scottish Ambulance Service does not hold the information requested
The total annual spend on staff mental health support, employee assistance programmes, counselling, occupational health or other psychological support services, where recorded.
The Scottish Ambulance Service does not hold a single recorded figure showing total expenditure on staff mental health support, employee assistance programmes, counselling, occupational health or other psychological support services by calendar year.
In accordance with section 17(1) of FOISA, the Scottish Ambulance Service does not hold the information in the exact format requested.
However, in line with our duty to provide advice and assistance under section 15 of FOISA, we can advise that the Service has previously identified expenditure associated with individual wellbeing providers and support services by financial year. This information was previously disclosed in response to FOI 26-266
Important information to consider when interpreting this information
The figures in FOI 26-266 relate to specific wellbeing initiatives and providers identified during the previous FOI exercise and should not be interpreted as representing the totality of expenditure on employee wellbeing, occupational health or psychological support services across the Scottish Ambulance Service.
The total number of employees in the organisation in each year.
The total number of employees in the Scottish Ambulance Service for each year requested. These figures were true as of the 1st of April in each year. It should be noted that the 2022 figure is still inclusive of many covid-related staff.
2026: 6739
2025: 6579
2024: 6520
2023: 6506
2022: 7283
2021: 6684
- Response Documents
