Working together to prevent suicide

I recently chaired a workshop on suicide prevention at the ADCS annual conference. This focus was a little unusual for us but it was specifically requested by members of the ADCS Families, Communities & Young People Policy Committee, who had flagged the growing numbers of children and young people taking their own lives, many of whom were not known to children's services. Overall, suicide rates have begun to fall in recent years but for under-20s it is sadly rising, as is self-harm which we know is a strong risk factor in suicide attempts.

In my preparations for this workshop I did some homework and discovered hard and fast figures for under-18s are difficult to come by, but Papyrus, a charity set up by a group of bereaved parents to prevent youth suicide, estimates that 200 school-aged children take their own lives each year. It is likely this is an underestimate as English figures are based on the findings of coroner's inquests, which do not always return definitive verdicts. We heard how, in Greater Manchester, an agreement has been reached with a number of coroners to share real time information about suspected suicides with local public health teams which allows for the mobilisation of a community response plan.