Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to provide suicide risk assessment training to clinicians in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services in the NHS.

Training provision in the National Health Service is the responsibility of individual organisations who are expected to ensure that training supports maintaining high professional standards, professional development and high quality care. Suicide prevention is a priority for this Government and when we updated the Cross-Government Suicide Prevention Strategy earlier this year we highlighted the need to support better mental health and suicide prevention awareness across the NHS.

Health Education England and Public Health England have been supporting this aim by reviewing materials such as e-learning tools for NHS professionals and are considering how best to support this nationally.