Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what (a) support his Department provides to and (b) safeguarding measures are in place within the welfare system for people assessed to be at serious risk of suicide or self-harm; and whether he plans to take steps to strengthen that support.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Department recognises the importance of supporting vulnerable customers. All staff working with customers undertake comprehensive training to equip them with the skills to be able to support those who express an intention of suicide or self-harm.
The Department has an established Six Point Plan for staff to follow when they identify a customer who may be at risk of harming themselves. This toolkit ensures that appropriate support is provided and this may involve notifying emergency services in the event where the customer is at immediate risk.
The Six Point Plan is under continuous review to ensure it aligns with current thinking on mental health. We also have Advanced Customer Support Senior Leaders whose role is to reach across local communities to underpin our relationships with other organisations that provide support to our customers.
The Work and Pensions Select Committee announced an inquiry into ‘Safeguarding vulnerable claimants’ on 21 July 2023 and will examine this with emphasis on whether the Department’s approach to safeguarding needs to change.
Asked by: Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the finding by the charity Words Matter that two in five children experience verbal abuse from the adults around them which can cause anxiety, depression, eating disorders, self-harm, substance abuse and suicide; and what steps they are taking in response.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Protection from abuse and neglect is a fundamental right for all children. The government’s priority for all vulnerable children is to keep them safe, protect their welfare and put their best interests at the heart of every decision.
In the department’s Children in Need statistics release, the department publishes data on factors identified at the end of an assessment by children’s social care services. The statistics release for 2023 is available here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/characteristics-of-children-in-need. Currently, verbal abuse is not defined as a separate category but would fall under emotional abuse. For that reason, the department has not made a specific assessment of the impact of verbal abuse on children, but it is the government’s priority to ensure all children are protected and safe from harm.
Government ministers and departmental officials have ongoing, regular engagement with the Children’s Commissioner and her office on a range of issues, including safeguarding children. The department has also offered to meet with the charity Words Matter to discuss their report in more detail so that the department can take forward any appropriate action to mitigate against the effects of verbal abuse on children and young people. Once departmental officials have met with Words Matter, the department will be in a better position to make a detailed assessment.
Asked by: Lord Harries of Pentregarth (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to reduce the number of suicides in prison.
Answered by Lord Bellamy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
Every death in custody is a tragedy and we continue to do all we can to improve the safety of prisoners.
We know that relationships between staff and prisoners plays an important role in preventing self-inflicted deaths in prisons and that is why we have announced additional investment in our workforce. As of 30 September 2023, there were 23,058 Full Time Equivalent (FTE) Band 3-5 prison officers in post, an increase of 1,441 FTE since 30 September 2022. This means staff can provide more support for prisoners and better monitor the risk of harm. In addition to recruiting new officers, we are developing and phasing in a new safety training package for staff. It brings together information on related safety topics, including suicide and self-harm prevention, understanding risks, triggers and protective factors. This training is complemented by a revised version of the case management approach used in prisons to support people at risk of suicide or self-harm.
We will continue to fund the Samaritans (£625,000 each year until March 2025) to deliver the Listener scheme where prisoners are trained to provide emotional support to each other. We have also worked with the Samaritans to design an additional support service for prisons in the period following a self-inflicted death, with the aim of reducing the risk of further deaths.
Asked by: Emma Lewell-Buck (Labour - South Shields)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many incidents of (a) self-harm, (b) suicide and (c) attempted suicide by patients within (i) 24 and (ii) 48 hours of discharge from a mental health hospital have been been recorded in the past year.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The Mental Health Services Dataset (MHSDS) does not hold the information requested.
The University of Manchester provides data on suicides for people in contact with mental health services annually. Their reports are available at the following link:
https://sites.manchester.ac.uk/ncish/reports/
Asked by: Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what progress they have made in determining whether suicide and self-harm prevention will be included in their guidance on relationships, sex and health education as an explicit part of the curriculum, in particular to support young people to spot the signs of, and seek appropriate support for, cases of suicidal ideation.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department is currently reviewing the Relationships, Sex and Health Education (RSHE) statutory guidance. In July 2023, as part of the review, the department held a workshop with teachers. The former Minister for Schools also chaired roundtable meetings with a panel of experts and with families to explore the inclusion of suicide prevention in the curriculum.
The department will publish an amended draft of the statutory guidance for consultation at the earliest opportunity. The department will consider responses carefully before publishing the final revised guidance in 2024.
Asked by: Lord Blunkett (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer of Lord Bellamy on 28 November (HL272), whether the figure quoted, of 18 deaths among those serving imprisonment for public protection sentences in secure hospitals up to 31 December 2022, is included within the overall figures of deaths of IPP prisoners published by the HM Prison and Probation Service for the same period.
Answered by Lord Bellamy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
HMPPS publishes quarterly Safety in Custody statistics which cover deaths, self-harm and assaults in prison custody, in England and Wales. These published statistics do not include the death of those in secure mental health facilities.
I also refer the noble Lord to the answer I gave to question HL273 on 28 November 2023, which can be found via the following link: Written questions and answers - Written questions, answers and statements - UK Parliament.
Asked by: Peter Gibson (Conservative - Darlington)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of (a) mental health and (b) suicide prevention provision in secondary schools.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Schools are best placed to decide what mental health and wellbeing support to offer to pupils. The department does not collect detailed data on suicide prevention provision in schools, but asks questions about schools’ perceptions of mental health support, as part of its regular omnibus surveys, the results of which are published here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-and-college-panel-omnibus-surveys-for-2022-to-2023.
The department is supporting effective whole school approaches to mental health through our commitment to offer all state schools and colleges a grant to train a senior mental health lead by 2025. This includes training on how to make sure they are including processes for identifying individuals or groups who need additional mental health support. There are 14,400 settings that have claimed a grant up to 31 August 2023, including more than 7 in 10 state-funded secondary schools.
To expand access to early mental health support, the department is continuing to roll out Mental Health Support Teams (MHSTs) to schools and colleges. As of April 2023, MHSTs covered 47% of pupils in secondary schools in England. The department is extending coverage of MHSTs to an estimated 44% of pupils and learners in all schools and colleges by the end of this financial year and at least 50% by the end of March 2025.
Suicide prevention is part of school and system wide approaches to mental health and wellbeing, where schools should promote good mental health in children, provide a supportive environment for those experiencing problems, and help secure access to more specialist help for those who need it.
Schools can teach older pupils about suicide in an age-appropriate and sensitive way. The Relationships, Sex and Health Education (RSHE) statutory guidance advises that schools should approach teaching about self-harm and suicide carefully and should be aware of the risks to pupils from exposure to materials that are instructive rather than preventative, including websites or videos that provide instructions or methods of self-harm or suicide.
To support schools to deliver this content effectively, the department has produced teacher training modules. The mental wellbeing module contains key knowledge and facts to help teachers understand what they must teach, and is available to view here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/teaching-about-mental-wellbeing.
The department has started work on the review of the RSHE statutory guidance. Suicide prevention is one of the key subjects that the department will explore as a priority area, and it will work with a range of experts and those with lived experience to do this.
Asked by: Sarah Olney (Liberal Democrat - Richmond Park)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps his Department is taking to help ensure that people in chronic mental health crisis and chronic psychosis are not excluded from the substantial risk category of limited capability for work-related activity.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
People who experience severe and enduring mental health problems have one of the lowest employment rates in the UK. Yet the vast majority want to work, and with the right support many people can. Our aim is to support those who want to work, aiming to remove this inequitable approach to supporting people back to work.
We have listened to stakeholder concerns about the impact on vulnerable customers of removing Limited Capability for Work Related Activity Substantial Risk (LCWRA risk) altogether and agree that LCWRA risk should be preserved for the most vulnerable. We will realign LCWRA risk with its original aim of applying only in exceptional circumstances, whilst still protecting and safeguarding the most vulnerable, which will include those who are at serious risk of suicide or self-harm. We propose that the criteria should include those who are currently in crisis under home treatment plans and those with an active psychotic illness, which will capture those who have recently, or may require, home treatment intervention because of their mental health condition.
We will work alongside clinicians to define the criteria and the medical evidence needed from claimants and people involved in their care, to ensure the process is safe, fair, and clear.
Asked by: Lord Bishop of St Albans (Bishops - Bishops)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many reported instances there are of violence or self-harm linked to video gaming in children and young people.
Answered by Lord Sharpe of Epsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
The Home Office does not hold information on the number of reported instances of violence or self-harm linked to video gaming in children and young people.
However, the Government takes this issue extremely seriously and is introducing a new offence through the Online Safety Act to make communications which encourage or assist self-harm illegal. This will protect people of all ages from this harmful content.
Equivalent provisions are set out in the Criminal Justice Bill currently making its way through Parliament, which create the same prohibitions offline.
Asked by: Andrew Rosindell (Conservative - Romford)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what recent steps he has taken with rail companies to help reduce rates of (a) suicide and (b) self-harm at railway stations in (i) Romford constituency and (ii) England.
Answered by Huw Merriman - Minister of State (Department for Transport)
Every rail operator is required to have a live Suicide Prevention Plan which covers requirements such as training of public facing staff in suicide prevention, putting in place mitigation measures at stations and promoting help seeking behaviour to vulnerable people at risk of suicide or self-harm.
Furthermore, every operator is also required to obtain and maintain accreditation to the Safeguarding on Rail Scheme, which is assessed independently by British Transport Police (BTP). The scheme requires operators to demonstrate how they are actively supporting vulnerable people on their network.
The BTP carries out a site visit following every suspected suicide on the railway to mitigate against future loss of life at the same location, and has a dedicated Harm Reduction Team (Hart) who work one to one with vulnerable individuals, joining up local authorities, the NHS and others to ensure the person is cared for and prevented from harming themselves on the rail network.