Improving risk management and safety planning for suicide and self-harm prevention is a priority in the Government’s suicide prevention strategy. The strategy highlights the importance of compliance with the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence’s (NICE) guidelines on risk assessment. NHS England is taking forward work in this area.

We would expect health professionals to have regard to guidelines from the NICE, which state that risk assessment tools should not be used to predict future suicide or repetition of self-harm.

End of Custody Supervised Licence (ECSL) began in October 2023. Analysis of its use will be based on at least one year’s worth of data and published in line with the same approach we take for other statistical releases such as deaths of offenders in the community.

There are strict eligibility criteria for release on ECSL.

Only some offenders due for automatic release on licence at the half-way point of their sentence are eligible to be considered for release under these arrangements. Offenders whose release is a matter for the Parole Board to assess are not in scope.

It remains at the discretion of the prison service to prevent the ECSL release of any prisoners where releasing an offender earlier presents a heightened risk than if they were released at their automatic release date. HMPPS senior leaders will take decisions over exclusions following advice from HM Prison and Probation Service staff.

Responsibility for the management of the youth secure estate in England and Wales was transferred from the Youth Justice Board to the Youth Custody Service, a distinct arm of His Majesty's Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS), in 2017.

There are various mechanisms to monitor the performance of the Youth Justice System, including youth custody. The Minister of State for Prisons, Parole and Probation chairs the Youth Justice Quarterly Performance Board (YJQPB), which provides strategic oversight on how effectively the Youth Justice System is performing. The Board uses key metrics and other intelligence across the entirety of the system to identify challenges and drive action to address these. Senior representatives across the Youth Justice System, including the Youth Custody Service, Youth Justice Board and other stakeholders within Government and the public sector collaborate to monitor the key metrics and drive change.

In addition, the Minister monitors specific custody-related performance updates through regular meetings with senior managers from Youth Custody Service.

Girls in the youth estate may be accommodated in mixed-gender settings, including within the Secure Children’s Home sector, Oakhill Training Centre and at HMYOI Wetherby. Placement decisions are made according to individual need, within the placement options available. Within each sector, each child has his or her own room - boys and girls do not mix. However, as they may do while at school within the community, boys and girls do mix in education and association areas- and are supervised by staff at all times.

Any girl in the youth estate who is at risk of self-harm will be supported through the Assessment, Care in Custody and Teamwork (ACCT) process, ensuring she has a dedicated case manager; and girls with the most complex needs will receive additional monitoring and more intensive case management.

HMPPS Safety Group supports the safety of all prisoners, and within the group, one member of staff focuses on IPP prisoners, which includes taking forward the safety actions identified in the IPP Action Plan.

Our refreshed IPP Action Plan, which will be published this summer along with our IPP Annual Report, now has a workstream dedicated to Safety with the main objective of supporting prisons to deliver safety improvements for those serving an IPP sentence.

Our primary focus is on raising awareness of the heightened risk of self-harm and suicide of IPP prisoners and we have developed an IPP Safety Toolkit to support prisons.

We will continue to monitor, analyse and share any changing or emerging trends in published IPP prisoner data with staff and to inform and update our guidance where appropriate.

The Youth Custody Service’s COVID-19 Research & Evaluation Programme Report, published in January 2023 (Youth Custody Service YCS CoRE Programme report (publishing.service.gov.uk)) explored the experiences of those involved in the youth secure estate in England and Wales during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the key findings was that staff were concerned about the effect on children’s well-being of regime restrictions and interruptions to criminal cases. They noted, however, a reduction in self-harm and violence, which they related to children’s feeling safer, as a result of smaller residential groups and a calmer regime.

Overall, our primary strategy to reduce violence within the youth estate is to deliver our framework for integrated care, known as ‘SECURE STAIRS,’ which seeks to support staff in working with children and young people to provide trauma-informed care which addresses the causes of their offending behaviour and sustainable long-term support in preparing them for release. This is delivered in partnership with NHS England, and includes improvements in areas such as conflict resolution and specialist psychological interventions.

In 2021, the Youth Custody Service and NHS England co-commissioned the Centre for Mental Health to undertake a review into the needs of girls in the children and young people secure estate.

The report found that trauma-related stress is then communicated differently by boys and girls. More often, girls communicated stress through internalising behaviours such as self-harm, and boys through externalising behaviours.

Any girl in the secure estate who is at risk of self-harm will be supported through the Assessment, Care in Custody and Teamwork (ACCT) process, ensuring she has a dedicated case manager, and girls with the most complex needs will receive additional monitoring and more intensive case management.

The Youth Custody Service (YCS) will review the support available to all those placed at HMYOI Wetherby, ensuring that the placement of any child in the secure estate is needs-led, and is in the child’s best interests. It will also develop gender-specific guidance on the care of girls in the establishment.

All residents at HMYOI Wetherby will be allocated an appropriate Custody Support Plan Officer, and will receive support sessions following any significant events.

Any child who is at risk of self-harm will be supported through the Assessment, Care in Custody and Teamwork (ACCT) process, ensuring that he or she has a dedicated case manager; and those with the most complex needs will receive additional monitoring and more intensive case management. The weekly Safety Intervention Meeting will discuss any acts of self-harm, or violence, and appropriate actions to support the children concerned will be included in the safety action plan.

This information is not held in the format requested.

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.

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/

​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.

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.

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.