Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what plans he has to improve the services offered by crisis resolution and home treatment teams to reduce the number of patients who die by suicide while under that care.

Earlier this year the Government announced an additional £1 billion to improve mental health services over the next five years. This includes £400 million to support delivery of the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health recommendation to develop seven-day community-based mental health crisis resolution services by 2020/21.

We launched the successful Mental Health Crisis Care Concordat in 2014 to ensure that people receive the appropriate support they need when they experience a mental health crisis. Every area in the country now has a local crisis care action plan in place which ensures that local agencies are working together to deliver support to people in a mental health crisis.

We welcomed the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health recommendations for suicide prevention to reduce the national suicide rate by 10% by 2020/21, for all areas to implement multi-agency suicide prevention plans by 2017 and that all deaths by suicide across NHS-funded mental health settings, including out-of-area placements, are learned from to prevent repeat events.

We have been clear that we expect local crisis care action plans to dovetail with multi-agency suicide prevention plans. My Rt. hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health delivered this message at the Crisis Care Summit in October. Public Health England published refreshed guidance to local authorities, ‘Local Suicide Prevention Planning: A practice resource’ in October to support them in developing suicide prevention plans. The guidance highlights the link with local crisis care action plans and suicide prevention plans.

We are strengthening key areas of the cross-Government Suicide Prevention Strategy to improve local delivery of its aims, which we will publish in due course.