Social Services: Telephone Services

(asked on 9th January 2018) - View Source

Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Department for Housing, Communities and Local Government, if he will make an assessment of the adequacy of response times for callers contacting local authority emergency social worker duty teams with suicidal thoughts.


Answered by
Rishi Sunak Portrait
Rishi Sunak
Prime Minister, First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service, and Minister for the Union
This question was answered on 19th January 2018

Every local area is required to have a multi-agency suicide prevention plan in place to implement tailored approaches to reducing suicides in their communities. We expect multi-agency groups to include all relevant organisations and professionals who may come into contact with someone at risk of suicide such as social care services and social workers. Guidance published by Public Health England on developing suicide prevention plans, Local suicide prevention planning: A practice resource, sets out how local data collections are important in developing effective action plans to reduce suicides and that data should be collected across a wide range of services including social care: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/suicide-prevention-developing-a-local-action-plan

The Government launched the Mental Health Crisis Care Concordat in 2014 which has been signed by a wide range of organisations including the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services, Association of Directors of Children’s Services and the College of Social Work. Every local area has a Mental Health Crisis Care Concordat action plan in place which should set out how local services such as health services, social services and the police should work together to respond to someone experiencing a mental health crisis.

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