Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to paragraph 59 of the Government's report of January 2017 entitled, Preventing suicide in England: Third progress report of the cross-government outcomes strategy to save lives, what progress NHS England has made on its plans to develop an evidence-based treatment pathway for self-harm for people of all ages as it committed to doing so for 2017-18 and 2018-19; and what the timetable is for that treatment pathway to come into existence.

The Cross-Government Suicide Prevention Workplan, published January 2019, set out that NHS England is working with the National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health to develop a framework for adult and older adult community mental health services, including for people who self-harm.

Following advice from members of NHS England’s Expert Reference Group, the framework replaced the planned pathways. It will consider the needs of people who self harm while being cared for in the community, giving due regard to existing National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidance on the longer-term management of people who self harm.

The Framework was published in September 2019 and is available on the NHS England and NHS Improvement website.

For children and young people, the NHS Long Term Plan makes commitments to expand children and young people’s services to provide an enhanced crisis offer. This expansion includes further work to strengthen local pathways between community, crisis and inpatient services, which will improve the evidence based self-harm pathway.