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 families bereaved by suicide have access to local, specialist postvention support.

Commissioning responsibility for local suicide bereavement services, sits with integrated care boards (ICBs) and it is for them to commission appropriate services for their local population while considering their overall financial position.

The NHS Long Term Plan committed that, from 2019/20, every area of the country would receive funding for suicide prevention and bereavement services by 2023/24. £57 million was allocated from the overall investment in mental health services in three annual waves via specific System Development Funding. Local systems had the flexibility to design bereavement services to best meet the needs of their local population, which could include peer support and specialist postvention services.

From 2023/24, funding for local suicide bereavement services has been included within System Development Funding allocations for adult crisis services. ICBs are able to spend this wider allocation flexibly according to the needs of their local population and the amounts invested in local suicide prevention and bereavement services cannot be separately identified.