All public sector partners in Salford are working together to address the devastating impact that suicide has on families and communities and ensure that suicide should always be considered an avoidable occurrence.
We know that Salford has a number of high risk groups (which mirror some of the nationally identified high risk groups) who may have a greater risk of suicide. These groups include:
It is important to note that not everyone who considers suicide has a mental health problem.
In our strategy, we have six key objectives to achieve this vision:
You can read more about our strategy and action plan in the documents below:
The Salford Suicide Prevention Partnership met at the beginning of April. The meeting talked about the following issues:
Salford Suicide Prevention Action Plan
The partnership updated and agreed the action plan for 2019/20. The most up-to-date version is available here
Greater Manchester Updates
Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership held a Month of Hope that started on World Suicide Prevention Day (10/09/19) and ended on World Mental Health Day (10/10/19). Events that have been held during this month are:
Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership are in the process of developing next years (2020/21) work plan.
Communications Update
The group received an update about the LQBTQ+ Communication Campaign that Salford Clinical Commissioning Group has been running.
Salford Clinical Commissioning Group attended the START Vigil and created a 50 second video.
The group received an updated about an NHS national campaign, Every Mind Matters. Material has been distributed to GPs and Pharmacies. The website can be found here.
Salford University Suicide Prevention Update
A representative from Salford University attended the meeting and provided an update about the Suicide Prevention work they are doing this included:
GP Risk Factors Project
There was an update about a project looking at if GPs can be notified if somebody is at risk of suicide by looking at potential risk factors e.g. breakdown of a relationship, social isolation, drug misuse, alcohol misuse, recent bereavement, financial difficulties etc. If assessed as being at risk the person would be linked into services to help support them.
Personal Journey Mapping
The partnership received an update about the Personal Journey Mapping project. The project will be mapping a small number of people with lived experience of suicide journey through the services and support that they may or may not have accessed. The project will help the partnership understand what is working well and what might need to change, so that people have better experiences in the future.
Living Well Programme Update
The partnership received an update about the Living Well Programme.
The Living Well Programme is a partnership of Salford City Council, CGG, mental health trust, voluntary sector and people with lived experience working together to improve mental health services in Salford.
Any Other Business
2018 Salford Suicide Audit – The annual Salford Suicide Audit is currently being developed using 2018 information. The group received an update about the initial findings. The full audit will be presented to the group at the January 2020 meeting.
Salford Suicide Prevention Partnership Update: July 2019
Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership have developed a Suicide Prevention website and an awareness raising campaign called ‘Shining a light on suicide’. The website and awareness campaign toolkit is available for everybody to use and can be accessed here: http://www.shiningalightonsuicide.org.uk/
Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership have launched a Greater Manchester suicide bereavement service on 1st April 2019. The service lets people know what services are available in your area if you have been bereaved by suicide.
Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership are improving links with the Coroners across Greater Manchester.
The group received an update about the Communication Campaigns that Salford Clinical Commissioning Group has been running over the last couple of months. This includes:
Planning for World Suicide Prevention Awareness Day
The group were asked to share their plans for World Suicide Prevention day.
START in Salford – Are organising a Vigil of Remembrance to commemorate those we have lost through suicide and in support of those left behind. There will be a Procession of Remembrance starting at START Wellbeing Centre to the Salford Museum & Art Gallery where the Vigil of Remembrance will take place. More information can be found in the attached flyer.
Mind in Salford – Mind in Salford are running the Salford 10K on 8th September in memory of people lost from suicide. Mind invited members of the group and their organisations to run with them.
Salford Suicide Bereavement Clinic
Salford Suicide Bereavement Clinic is currently running two clinics a week. There are currently 15 people attending the clinics. The service is currently accepting referrals from GPs, but plan to accept self-referrals in the future.
The group were asked to review a leaflet and referral form for the service to and provide feedback on anything that could be improved.
Greater Manchester Suicide Bereavement Postvention Service
A representative from the Greater Manchester Suicide Bereavement Postvention Service attended the meeting to provide the group with an update on the service. The Greater Manchester Suicide Bereavement Postvention Service is there to tell people that have been bereaved by suicide about the support that is available in their local area. To help build up a directory of services the group were asked tell the Greater Manchester Suicide Bereavement Postvention Service about services and groups that are available in Salford.
Meadowbrook CCTV
The group were asked to consider if a CCTV camera should be put up in the public area near to the Meadowbrook Unit with views of the nearby bridge. The group decided not to support a CCTV being installed in the public area of Meadowbrook.
(Personal Journey Mapping relates to action 14.1 in the Salford Suicide Prevention Action Plan)
Terms of Reference
A draft Terms of Reference for the Salford Suicide Prevention Partnership was reviewed by the partnership and amendments were requested. The Terms of Reference will be updated and sent to the group for approval.
A Terms of Reference will describe what the group is about and will explain the roles and responsibilities of the people that attend the meeting.
The Terms of Reference will be shared on the website once it is complete.
Subsidised Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (ASIST) – Mind IN Salford told the group about a two day suicide prevention training event they have organised on 1st and 2nd August 2019. Mind invited members of the group to come on the training.
Turn Yellow for World Suicide Prevention Month – START in Salford handed out ‘Turn Yellow for World Suicide Prevention Month’ packs to the group. The packs have leaflets and flags that can be displayed on desks, in windows etc. The group were asked to display the contents of the pack. The aim of the packs is to contribute towards a society that makes it the norm to discuss how we are feeling and know that we matter.
The CCGs Communications and Engagement team are planning to add the Greater Manchester ‘Shining a light on suicide’ campaign to all future CCG suicide prevention campaigns. The next social media campaign will be focusing on how to cope with exam stress and pressure.
PAPYRUS Evaluation
2017-2019 Salford City Council commissioned PAPYRUS (the national charity dedicated to the prevention of young suicide) to deliver a series of suicide awareness and training sessions across Salford. The evaluation from the training sessions was presented to the partnership. In total 521 people attended the training sessions and they were well received. Salford City Council is thinking about how they can continue the suicide awareness and training.
Suicide Z-card roll out
In 2018 the CCG and people with lived experience of suicide developed a two sided, pocket sized z-card leaflet. One side of the leaflet offers support with managing suicidal thoughts and the other side offers support for helping someone manage suicidal thoughts. Unfolding the leaflet provides more information about what to do and how to get/give help. A small number of leaflets were printed out and trialled in different locations across Salford. The locations included gyms, cafés and gateways. The feedback from the leaflets was very positive and the CCG now want to distribute the leaflets across Salford. The partnership discussed the best way to distribute the leaflets across Salford and how the impact of the leaflets can be measured.
(Suicide Z-card roll out relates to action 14.2 in the Salford Suicide Prevention Action Plan)
Data Sharing Agreement
A Data Sharing Agreement will also be developed for Salford Suicide Prevention Partnership. A Data Sharing Agreement will clearly explain what the group’s roles and responsibilities are in relation to any data that is being shared in the meeting.
The Salford Suicide Prevention Partnership met at the beginning of January. The meeting talked about the following issues:
The suicide prevention action plan is updated regularly by all the members of the partnership. The most up-to-date version is available here
Adele Owen has joined the Greater Manchester Health & Social Partnership as the Greater Manchester Suicide Prevention Programme Manager.
In Spring Greater Manchester Health & Social Care Partnership will be starting work on a Greater Manchester wide Suicide Prevention audit.
The CCGs Communications and Engagement team have been running a suicide prevention campaign on social media over the Christmas period. The campaign will continue until the end of January 2019. The campaign has focused on increased anxiety, stress, money worries, debt advice and loneliness.
Every year, Salford Public Health carries out an audit of the number of deaths by suicide in the area. This helps us to understand how we can help to support people as early as possible and prevent people from considering suicide.
Salford Public Health shared the ‘Salford 2017 Annual Suicide Audit’ report with the group. At the meeting Salford Public Health presented the headlines and recommendations from the audit. It was agreed that the group would review the audit and recommendations and provide any comments back to Salford Public Health.
The recommendations from the audit will be reviewed alongside Salford’s Suicide Prevention Action Plan and any new actions that have identified as part of the audit will be added to the action plan.
The group had a discussion about the methods people might use to die by suicide based on information from the Suicide Prevention Audit. The group talked about how they could help prevent people from accessing these methods or, where this is not possible direct the person to help and support available.
Ideas discussed included free suicide awareness training for people that work in housing and in shops.
A Terms of Reference will be developed for Salford Suicide Prevention Partnership. A Terms of Reference will describe what the group is about and will explain the roles and responsibilities of the people that attend the meeting.
Our next Suicide Prevention Partnership will be in April 2019 and we will look to provide another update following this meeting. To be added to the email network for additional information, please contact: lauren.smith34@nhs.net
The Salford Suicide Prevention Partnership met at the beginning of August. The meeting talked about the following issues
Suicide Prevention Resource
A business card sized information card has been developed to support people to manage thoughts of suicide. This has been developed by local people who have survived suicide, been bereaved by suicide or who are working on suicide prevention. The card will be tested out in two areas of Salford between August and October. Learning from this testing will help us to plan how we use the card in the future.
Blue Light Training (Mind in Salford)
This programme is being delivered by the Greater Manchester Mind organisations. They are working with the Resilience Hub to offer support to people working in blue light services (Greater Manchester Police, North West Ambulance Service, Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue) around mental health and trauma. The approach offers training for managers and staff around mental health awareness and support for all staff and volunteers. Support includes group or 1:1 sessions, based on talking therapies or resilience building.
Mind have also developed a new app for mobile phones which they are testing with a small group of officers from Greater Manchester Police. The app uses bite-sized interventions, mindfulness and self-care techniques
Offload Programme (Salford Red Devils)
The Offload programme is a mental fitness programme for men, delivered by Rugby players and based around stress management techniques, finding life balance, managing setbacks, coping strategies, anger management and problem solving.
The partnership talked about the importance of learning from this programme – particularly around how this type of activity is marketed to men and how men are involved in the development of the programme.
Start Art Campaign
Start in Salford shared information on their awareness campaign around suicide prevention. A candlelit remembrance vigil is being held on Monday, 10th September (Suicide Prevention Awareness Day), 6.30-7.30pm at the Lowry Plaza, The Quays, Salford, M50 3AZ. A remembrance roll for those who have died by suicide will be read out on the day. Anyone wishing to add their loved one’s name to the roll can email dennis.baldwin@startinspiringminds.org.uk
As part of the campaign work, Start is also delivering an art installation called ‘Sea of Hands of Support’ which shares positive messages of support and experience. A project to share the experiences of people who have survived suicide is also underway.
As part of the Salford Suicide Prevention Partnership, a Communications Group focuses on the messages and information shared around Suicide Prevention across the city. A communications plan has been developed and will see a number of targeted messages to specific groups and communities over the next year.
2017 Audit
Every year, Salford Public Health carries out an audit of the number of deaths by suicide in the area. This helps us to understand how we can help to support people as early as possible and prevention people considering suicide. The headlines from the Audit were shared with the group and a full report is expected in October.
Our next Suicide Prevention Partnership will be in October 2018 and we will look to provide another update following this meeting. To be added to the email network for additional information, please contact: clare.mayo@nhs.net.
Salford Suicide Prevention Partnership Update: May 2018
Six Degrees Social Enterprise has been tasked by Greater Manchester to map the bereavement support available in each of the 10 localities in Greater Manchester. This will be a 6-9 month piece of work and the findings will inform the pilot of a service to provide practical support and to support referrals to local support in each locality. This aims to support people who have been affected by an unexpected death to reach the right support and help in a timely way.
Another Greater Manchester project is to explore a real-time data system. This would notify appropriate services that there has been an unexpected death, with the aim of getting support to people bereaved as quickly as possible. The project is looking at what is available in other areas and is currently planning the best pathway to ensure that information is shared.
The Partnership received an update on the work being carried out by the communications team in relation to suicide prevention. Campaigns on social media in Salford are currently focusing on Mental Health Awareness Week, issues raised by the Coronation Street storyline and the anniversary of the Manchester Arena attack. The Communications Team have developed a media pack which contains videos, gifs, pictures, tweets and facebook posts – all of which have been shared with partners across Salford. The CCG webpages on suicide prevention have experienced over 8300 visitors and the support pages have received over 2000 hits.
The Partnership also discussed the range of other types of communications available to share messages for suicide prevention.
Start in Salford – Reach Out to End Suicide
Start in Salford is running a campaign to promote suicide prevention. This work is funded through grant applications and focuses on a number of key projects which use arts to share messages of hope and support. You can find out more about the projects here: https://www.startinspiringminds.org.uk/our-projects/reach-out/
Child Death Overview Panel
The Partnership looked at data which started to highlight the things that may impact on young people’s vulnerability to the risk of suicide. A better understanding of this will help us to plan ways of supporting people as early as possible to reduce the risk.
Audit of Hospital Attendance For Those People Aged Under 19 Years For Suicide And Self Harm
This information will help us to think about how we support young people who are presenting at A+E for self-harm. It was agreed that it would be useful to look at case examples of those people who have presented to A+E multiple times and those people who have presented once to see how support could be better structured.
New Partnership Members
The Salford Suicide Prevention Partnership welcomed Salford University as a new member. Bernadette Conlon from Start in Salford was agreed as the VOCAL Voluntary Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) Representative on the Partnership.
Audit of Deaths by Suicide in 2016/17
Every year, Salford Public Health Team undertakes an audit of people who have died from Suicide in Salford. There were 23 deaths between the 1st January 2016 – 31st December 2017. Based on the findings of the audit, the recommendations for this year were to focus approached on the following high risk groups:
Suicide Prevention Action Plan
The Partnership looked back through the action plan to see what had been completed, what new actions needed adding and if there were any incomplete items. A full draft of the action plan is available.
Bereavement Support
Greater Manchester has agreed to fund a Bereavement Support service. This will offer practical, coordination and signposting support to those bereaved by suicide. Salford CCG will lead this work on behalf of Greater Manchester. There will be some work carried out in the first six months of this project to see how best it should run.
Greater Manchester Standards for Preventing Suicide and Self Harm in General Practice
These standards set out the best approaches for suicide and self-harm prevention in general hospitals. There has been a joint piece of work between Salford Royal Foundation Trust and Greater Manchester Mental Health Trust to look at the standards and agree on any improvements that need taking forward. From those discussions, work has been ongoing around the following areas:
Awareness Resource
A fold out business card style resource for use in the community was agreed. It will contain information on one side for helping others, and information on the other side for helping someone else. This is currently being designed and is hoped to be ready for the end of March. The resource will be tested in two areas of Salford (Pendleton and Eccles), along with additional awareness raising resources.
Training
Safetalk training (a half day training session on suicide prevention) is being piloted with Hairdressers, Barbers and Tattoo Artists across Greater Manchester. There is a session taking place in Salford on the 26th March.
Suicide Safer Community Accreditation
This is a large submission for accreditation with Living Works. In line with the 9 pillars of suicide prevention, the accreditation requires evidence to demonstrate commitment to improving a local approach to suicide prevention. There is an aim to submit this application towards the end of March.
Greater Manchester West Safety Plan
This work focuses on people attend A&E but who are not appropriate to be followed up by the secondary mental health services and are being supported by the GP.
Lead practitioners, clinicians and service users have worked together to design the booklet. The booklet asks the service user to identify:
It also records the name of the person dong the assessment and a list of useful contact numbers. This work complements the follow up support offered by Samaritans after someone has visited A&E for support with mental health problems and the work relating to the 48 hour wellbeing check and 7 day follow up for people being discharged from inpatient support.
Communications
Since the last meeting, the communications group have focused on campaigns on social media, including:
From 11th December until January 2018, the messages reached 545,000 people across Twitter and Facebook.
The next steps for the communications group are to carry out filming of two people’s experiences and interviews with people undertaking the Safetalk training. Over the next year, the communications group will focus on reaching the following groups: men 40-59, children and young people, construction workforce, BME groups and LGBT communities.
Start In Salford: Suicide Prevention Campaign
As part of Start’s 25 year anniversary this year, they will be running a suicide prevention campaign. This will cover a range of activities including art installations, amplifying the voices of survivors and memorial activities. For further information on the campaign work, please visit: https://www.startinspiringminds.org.uk/our-projects/reach-out/
The Salford Suicide Prevention Board meet quarterly. Below is an update on where our work to preventing suicide in Salford is up to:
Audit
Each year, we look at data from both the police and fire and rescue databases, along with information from the Coroner's reports, to help us decide where we might need to do more work. This year’s information tells us similar information to the information included in the Strategy. It also tells us that we might need to look back on information over the past 10 years, as it is hard to identify themes by year. Our most recent audit report will be available in the early part of 2018.
People’s Views
Our engagement team has been out and about in Salford to a range of community activities, festivals and events to talk to people about Suicide Prevention. Over 200 local people have told us where they think we should be starting to deliver suicide awareness information. We had lots of great ideas, from pubs, to hairdressers, to sports clubs and local supermarkets! We will be using this information to help us plan how we share our awareness raising information.
Locations
We have been looking at data from the Police records and the Fire and Rescue databases to learn more about which areas of Salford might have a higher risk for suicidal thoughts and actions. We know that areas with higher levels of poverty are more at risk, as well as some particular areas of the City. Understanding this information will help us to think about where we start our suicide prevention awareness raising activities.
Suicide Prevention Strategy and Action Plan
Our Salford Suicide Prevention Strategy 2017 - 2022 is now published. This sets out our approach to suicide prevention in Salford, as well as our ambition to have zero deaths by suicide. Our Strategy and Action plan are available on our web pages. Our action plan will be updated regularly.
Partnerships
We have been extending our partnerships as we recognise that suicide prevention is everyone’s business. We have widened our partnership to include other organisations such as Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprises, Fire and Rescue and Healthwatch. We have also developed a network group which includes faith communities, charities, organisations and individuals with an interest in suicide prevention. Our aim is to share information following each Partnership meeting and engage with the network when we are planning big pieces of work.
Social Media
We have been running a social media campaign using videos to share key messages about suicide prevention. We have also been sharing information on Facebook and Twitter and will be developing more social media content over the next few months.
News
We have been sharing our work through news articles on Key 103, in Life in Salford and through the CCG Patient Panel.
We have set up a communications group which is looking at the information we develop and the awareness campaigns we will be delivering to raise awareness of suicide prevention.
Suicide Prevention Awareness Pack
We will be getting a group of partnership members, people with personal experience and network members together to help us to think about how we share messages about suicide prevention. We have been looking at what information is already available and we hope to have a resource pack by the new year. We will be using the information on Salford locations and the things that local people have told us to develop a plan around how we share this information.
Information for Employers
We have been looking at toolkits which are available to help employers think about supporting the emotional wellbeing of their employees and to plan how best to support suicide prevention in the work place. We will be looking at using the best toolkit to help our biggest employers in the City.
Information for Education
Papyrus (an organisation to support young people who are feeling suicidal) has a great information pack for schools, colleges and universities. We want to share this information with Salford schools and help them to think about the emotional wellbeing of their students. We also want to use some of the drama sessions in Schools to think about the support the people might need if they feel suicidal.
Holiday Season
The holiday season is nearly here and we know that this can sometimes be a difficult time of year. We will be looking at making sure that we share contact details for support over the winter period.
We will be looking to apply for accreditation from Living Works (https://www.livingworks.net/community/suicide-safer-communities/) for our Suicide Prevention work. This will mean that we need to provide details of all of the work that we are doing to prevent suicide in Salford. We hope to have achieved the accreditation by early 2018.
Our next Suicide Prevention Partnership will be in February 2018 and we will look to provide another update following this meeting. To be added to the email network for additional information, please contact: clare.mayo@nhs.net.
