Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to ensure that Kent & Medway NHS Trust staff have (a) autism awareness and (b) suicide awareness training; and what steps he is taking to ensure the provision of that training for health and social care professionals.

Following the death of Callie Lewis in 2018, Kent and Medway NHS Trust have initiated a series of actions. The Trust has updated its suicide prevention training for staff, including refreshing its suicide prevention strategy to specifically reference autism. This training is now a mandatory annual requirement for all Trust staff within inpatient, liaison psychiatry and crisis settings. The Trust has updated its training to include the risks of suicide forums.

In January 2019, we published the first Cross-Government Suicide Prevention Workplan, which sets out an ambitious programme across national and local government and the National Health Service.