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The Mental Health (Care and Treatment) (Scotland) Act 2003 imposed a duty on local authorities and health boards to collaborate to ensure the availability of independent advocacy services in their area. The Act gave everyone with mental illness, learning disability, dementia and related conditions the right to access independent advocacy support.

This video, made for Scotland’s national Adult Support and Protection Day 2025, highlights financial abuse of older adults. It looks at potential signs of financial abuse, and who might be especially at risk. This video can be shared with the public to raise awareness and contains helplines who can offer support. A shorter version is also available.

The transcript of the video is attached.

This is an ASPire webinar from February 2025. Its theme is financial harm affecting older adults. It has sessions on multi-agency shared learning from the outcome of the McCulloch Brothers Review (Highland), financial harm, adult Protection and decision-making (Dr Melanie Durowse), and explaining the role of the Office of the Public Guardian in relation to financial harm affecting older adults (Fiona Brown). Slides for selected sessions are also attached.

This guidance describes what is meant by hoarding, the types of behaviour exhibited, and what the impact may be on the individual and those around them. It outlines three broad approaches to addressing hoarding behaviour (single agency response, formalised multi-agency complex case management, and investigations under the Adult Support & Protection (Scotland) Act 2007).

This briefing outlines the standards for GPs and general practice staff from the Royal College of General Practitioners (RGCP). The briefing includes details of the safeguarding hub for general practice: this contains extensive resources aligned to the standards, including a toolkit, e-learning, and audio/visual material.

This seven-minute briefing is a primer for all staff working in health on Adult Support and Protection in Scotland. Key information on the responsibilities of health staff, the legal framework of ASP, information sharing, and health leadership is included. There are also links to further learning and guidance.

The briefing supports the RCGP safeguarding standards for general practice.

This video is a short introduction to self-harm. Three peer practitioners, from Self-Harm Network Scotland (who have lived experience of self-harm) discuss some assumptions surrounding self-harm. They stress that self-harm is usually related to an underlying issue, and talk together about how self-harm can be a way for the person to attempt to control, or cope with, another issue in their lives.

This hour-long webinar looks at what independent advocacy is and why advocacy would be involved from an ASP perspective. The different services describe their role in independent advocacy, and there are case studies showing advocacy in action.

This session was produced as part of ASP week 2025. It was created in collaboration with the network of different independent advocacy agencies in Dundee.

This toolkit clarifies the National Referral Mechanism (NRM) process for Scottish First Responders by explaining the process in detail and in an easy-to-follow format. It aims to help ensure that the quality of information included in NRM referrals is high, and that first responders better understand the implications of a referral and the NRM process.

Please note: this toolkit does not reflect the most recent range of provisions within Part 5 of the Nationality and Borders Act or the amendments to the Reasonable Grounds (RG) test.