Health and Care Working Together in South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw

Our work in suicide prevention

It has been agreed that a shared vision for suicide prevention across South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw (SYB) will support and enhance the existing place based suicide prevention plans and the wide range of work already taking place.

As partners, we are focusing on a range of initiatives to reduce suicide and support vulnerable groups. This includes working with high-risk populations such as men, male prisoners, vulnerable children and young people, and individuals with personality disorders. We aim to improve understanding of, and support for, self-harm, particularly following acute hospital presentations, and to enhance support for primary care staff through training and resources. Additionally, we are prioritising better bereavement support across various settings, including postvention support for those affected by suicide.

Other key areas of focus include initiatives around medication prescribing and storage, as well as developing a real-time suicide surveillance system to inform interventions after a suspected suicide, even before a coroner’s conclusion. Collaboration with partner agencies remains central to our work, enabling us to share good practice, learn lessons, and undertake South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw-wide projects

The vision for work across SYB is to deliver the right support and care, in the right setting, by the right people; including the redistribution of resources to support prevention. Working collectively on suicide prevention strongly supports this vision.

Our current priorities

Supporting locality areas to further develop suicide prevention and reduction plans

Each locality area will produce a driver diagram of how work on reducing suicide and self-harm in mental health services, reducing self-harm in community and acute services, suicide prevention in men and/or work with primary care will be delivered. This work will then be aggregated to determine what can be done once across SYB and what is best delivered in localities. Following the aggregation firm plans will be developed in terms of deliverables and what needs investment at a local level.

Develop a real time surveillance system across South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw

A workshop will be held to agree a potential system of real time surveillance across SYB. Real-time suicide surveillance is a system that enables consideration of interventions required after a death has occurred where the circumstances suggest suicide in advance of the coroner’s conclusion. The workshop will agree what elements of real time surveillance can be done at scale and what needs to remain at local place, will agree where additional resources are required and begin work on outputs such as a business case for funding, memorandum of understanding etc.

Undertake a retrospective coroners audit across South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw

Write a specification to commission a university led piece of work across the coroners’ offices in SYB to retrospectively review coroners’ verdicts around suicide to enable learning about circumstances; potential contributing factors i.e. austerity etc.in suicides across SYB.

Work with the local media across South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw to improve media handling of suicide

Working in conjunction with communications leads across SYB reiterate to local media that industry-wide codes of practice should be heeded when reporting sensitive or complex issues, including suicide, whether the codes are codified in law or operate on the model of ‘self-regulation’. Promote the Samaritan’s Media Guidelines for reporting suicide.

Our current challenges

Some of the key challenges include delays in establishing a project team with the necessary skills to coordinate and support the work programme, as well as delays in transferring finances to localities, which hinders the timely initiation of work programmes. There have also been issues accessing national expertise to inform local analysis and identify the most appropriate evidence-based intervention models. Engaging primary care fully remains a significant challenge, alongside difficulties in identifying and securing external support for training programmes. Some organisations face constraints in releasing staff to participate in training, which further impacts progress.

However, mitigations for the above will include:

– Considering the use of external project support to facilitate setting up the programme team and expert input into programme development if needed.
– Early involvement of CCG GP clinical leads in the programme.
– Ensuring the training plan has sufficient flexibility as regards delivery models.
– Allocating funding for backfill for clinical and other staff to attend training.
– Risks will be escalated and managed through the SYB programme governance arrangements as appropriate.