Agenda item

Ruth Fletcher-Brown, Public Health Specialist

Ruth Fletcher-Brown, Public Health Specialist, presented an update on suicide prevention and the self-harm action plan.

The latest suicide rata data for Rotherham showed that, after a small decrease between 2013-15, the 3 year combined rate had increased from 13.9 to 15.9 per 100,000 DSR (directly standardised rate) between 2014-16 and 2015-17.  Rotherham was significantly higher than England and ranked as the second highest compared to 15 CIPFA Nearest Neighbour local authorities.  There had been 107 deaths over the 3 years 2015-17 with males accounting for approximately ¾ of suicide deaths.  The female rate had also increased every period since 2010-12 and was now significantly higher than England.  The rate for Rotherham females ranked as the highest amongst CIPFA Nearest Neighbours.

Progress against the 2016-2018 Suicide Prevention and Self Harm action plan had been reported on a monthly basis to the Mental Health and Learning Disability Transformation Board, a sub-group of the Rotherham Place Plan Board.  Annual updates had also been submitted to the Health and Wellbeing Board.

The refreshed draft action plan followed the same national areas for action.  Also local intelligence had been used to inform the priority areas for Rotherham during 2019-21.

South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw Integrated Care System had received funding for 2 years from NHS England for suicide prevention.  The funding could not fund local plans in their entirety but could support work in line with the national priorities i.e.

1.     Reducing suicide and self harm in Mental Health Services

2.     Reducing self harm in Community and Acute Services

3.     Suicide prevention in men and/or work with Primary Care

Discussion ensued with the following issues raised/clarified:-

-          The excellent work of the Suicide Prevention Group

-          From a Police perspective the numbers had recently increased.  Reassurance was required that the appropriate referrals had been made at the right time for early intervention, what happened with the partnership assessment, was the threshold too high.  The Police attended post-event but there was a desire to deploy resources before an event took place

-          There had been a lot of care and attention in Rotherham for a long time and some of the work carried out had been ground breaking.  However, due to the recent increase was there still the critical support and challenge?  If Rotherham was at the forefront of good practice but still finding these issues it was important that work/discussion took place with regional and national players to benefit from their experiences

-          The National Enquiry Team, who was working out of Manchester University, had recently given a presentation to RDaSH.  The information shared had been very thought provoking and driven the organisation to think about where was there clear evidence about what made a difference

-          An event should be held bringing together all the key partners to think differently about what partners were doing as it had not been successful of late and ascertain if there was anything underlying that was not being picked up

Resolved:-  That the draft Rotherham Suicide Prevention and Self-Harm Action Plan 2019-21 be noted.