Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether his Department has allocated additional funding available to preventative services to help reduce incidences of self-harm in prisons during the covid-19 outbreak; and whether his Department provides specific support to women in prisons at risk of self harm.

We are under no illusions about the impact of the measures which were put in place to protect lives during the Covid-19 pandemic and we have made prisoners’ wellbeing our priority. We have produced a range of products to support governors in devising and implementing local safety and welfare plans designed to mitigate risks and promote wellbeing. We have developed new guidance for staff on understanding and supporting someone who is self-harming. We have enabled continued family contact through more than 1,600 secure mobile phones and secure video calls. We continue to work closely with the Samaritans who are providing support for Listeners – selected prisoners trained to provide emotional support to their fellow prisoners and who continue to offer their phone service for emotional support.

We are delivering more in-cell activity and are continuing to improve our offer to support prison residents during this period. For example, distraction packs, supplementary food packs and additional educational materials have been provided, as well as £5 PIN credit per prisoner per week.

We recognise that the level of self-harm in the women’s estate is too high and are determined to reduce this. A Women’s Self-Harm Task Force was set up in April 2020 in response to our increasing concerns about the level of self-harm in the Women’s estate. We know that many of the drivers (risks and triggers) and protective factors linked to women’s risk of self-harm in prisons have been impacted by Covid-19 and the restricted regimes that have been put in place to control the spread of infection.

The Task Force has led work to introduce a number of specific interventions to counteract the impact of Covid-19 on self-harm in the Women’s estate. This work has seen the introduction of bespoke well-being checks, increased credit to enable phone calls and increased access to Purple Visits (video calls with family and friends).

We have prioritised the roll out of the revised version of the Assessment, Care in Custody and Teamwork (ACCT) multi-disciplinary case management system used in prisons to support people at risk of suicide and self-harm. We will also be implementing the Offender Management in Custody model in the female estate in April. This will provide each woman in the female estate with a dedicated key worker who will be able to better support them and identify concerns at an early stage so that women can receive the right support at the right time.