Personalised approach to risk: learning event 1

Family/carer involvement in self-harm and suicide prevention

Tuesday, 22 October 2024

On this page:

• Recordings of the session
• Links and resources
  • NCISH research on family involvement
  • Guidance from the Care Quality Commission, the Royal College of Psychiatrists and NHS England
  • Health and Care Professionals Council education standard
  • Equity principles: culturally appropriate care and ethnic inequalities, autism-informed care, and trauma-informed care
  • National Institute for Health and Care Excellence
  • Department of Health and Social Care and the Zero Suicide Alliance
  • NHS Health Education England competence framework
  • Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust and Making Families Count
  • NHS Resolution
  • Triangle of Care

Recordings of the session

< Back to top

Links and resources

NCISH research on family involvement

• Family involvement, patient safety and suicide prevention in mental healthcare: ethnographic study (BJPsych Open, 2023)
  Family/carer involvement may be facilitated by better communication around safety and care plans, signposting to carer groups, and support for carers.

  View an infographic summarising the study findings.

< Back to top

Guidance from the Care Quality Commission, the Royal College of Psychiatrists and NHS England

• Care Quality Commission: examples of culturally appropriate care
  This resource provides examples of culturally appropriate care and how these are relevant to the Care Quality Commission regulations.
• Royal College of Psychiatrists: how can we maximise the involvement of carers and families in managing enduring mental illness?
  This resource discusses the research literature on carer and family involvement and makes recommendations on how to involve carers/families in an individual’s care.
• NHS England: A bite-size guide to involving carers
  This guide specifies the core principles and practical steps to involving carers.

< Back to top

Health and Care Professionals Council education standard

• Health and Care Professionals Council education standard on service user and carer involvement
  Programmes accredited by the Health and Care Professionals Council (HCPC) are required to deliver training on numerous education standards, including on service user and carer involvement. This webpage lists what the HCPC look for when involving service users and carers in programmes.

< Back to top

Equity principles: culturally appropriate care and ethnic inequalities, autism-informed care, and trauma-informed care

• Skills for care: culturally appropriate care guide
  This guide is designed to help anyone involved in the care and support of individuals to have a clearer understanding of culturally appropriate care. It focuses on supporting people with learning disabilities, autistic people, and people with dementia. It also considers the experiences of people from ethnic minority backgrounds and people who are LGBT+.
• NHS Race and Health Observatory: Ethnic Inequalities in Healthcare: A Rapid Evidence Review
  This summarises findings and recommendations from 178 studies of ethnic inequalities in healthcare and within the NHS workforce. The review identified barriers to help-seeking for mental health problems in ethnic minority groups, due to distrust of both primary care and mental health care providers, and a fear of being discriminated against in healthcare.
• NHS England: Meeting the needs of autistic adults in mental health services
  This guidance is for integrated care boards, health organisations and wider system partners and provides advice to improve the quality, accessibility and acceptability of care and support for autistic adults.
• NHS England: 10 sensory principles
  This poster provides suggestions on how to improve the experience of autistic individuals with services.
• (Mis)understanding trauma-informed approaches in mental health (Journal of Mental Health, 2018)
  This editorial discusses the importance of lived experience when developing and implementing trauma-informed approaches.
• Escaping iatrogenic harm: A journey into mental health service avoidance (Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing, 2024)
  This lived experience narrative provides a first-person perspective of experiences of harm within mental health services.

< Back to top

National Institute for Health and Care Excellence

• Scenario: Acute management following an act of self-harm
  This scenario discusses the management of a person presenting to primary care following self-harm, including how to involve carers and families.
• NICE Guideline [NG225]: Evidence review for involving family and carers in the management of people who have self-harmed
  This Guideline review provides evidence around the views and preferences of people who have self-harmed, their families and carers, and staff working with people who have self-harmed about the best ways of involving family and carers.
• NICE Quality Standard [QS189]: Suicide prevention
  This NICE Quality Standard on suicide prevention covers five quality statements relevant to suicide reduction and help for people bereaved or affected by suicide.
• NICE Quality Standard [QS189]: Suicide prevention – Quality Statement 4: Involving family, carers or friends
  This Quality Statement outlines the rationale for involving family carers and friends and quality measures that can be used to assess the quality of care or service provision.

< Back to top

Department of Health and Social Care and the Zero Suicide Alliance

• SHARE: consent, confidentiality and information sharing in mental healthcare and suicide prevention
  This report is designed as a guide for clinicians working with those at risk of self-harm and suicide. It provides practical examples on how to discuss and gain consent for sharing information.

< Back to top

NHS Health Education England competence framework

• Self-harm and Suicide Prevention Competence Framework
  This competence framework focuses on self-harm and suicide prevention for people of all ages living in the community. It discusses evidence of ‘what works’ and the knowledge and skills needed by healthcare professionals and organisations.

< Back to top

Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust and Making Families Count

• Caring for someone who may be at risk of suicide
  A resource for carers on caring for someone who may be at risk of suicide. It includes resources, advice on what to do in an emergency, organisations that can help, and support for carers.
• Experiences and needs of adult informal carers of adults at risk of suicide: A systematic review with mixed methods analysis (Journal of Advanced Nursing, 2023)
  This review summarises evidence of experiences and needs of carers of adults at risk of suicide.
• Involving and supporting families, friends, and carers during a mental health crisis (The Lancet Psychiatry, 2024)
  This correspondence article discusses barriers to involving families and carers during a mental health crisis, and makes recommendations for clinicians.
• Might informal carers of adults with enduring suicidality experience anticipatory loss? (Crisis, 2022)
  This article discussed the concept of anticipatory grief and how the latter may help clinicians understand the experiences of carers of individuals engaging in suicidal behaviour.
• Making Families Count: a support organisation
  Making Families Count provide support for families and training for healthcare professionals to drive greater engagement and support for families, improve patient safety and reduce harm, and ensure better investigations and learning for everyone.
• Life Beyond the Cubicle: e-learning resources
  The “Life Beyond the Cubicle” project aims to emphasise the existence of individuals, families, and friends before and beyond consultations with healthcare professionals. Visit the Making Families Count website for more information on Life Beyond the Cubicle. Training developed by Making Families Count is available through the NHS Learning Hub.

< Back to top

NHS Resolution

• Learning from suicide-related claims: A thematic review of NHS Resolution data
  This report presents an analysis of claims made after an individual has attempted to take their life. It identifies common problems with care and provides recommendations for improvement to support service delivery.

< Back to top

Triangle of Care

• The Triangle of Care and its six key standards
  The Triangle of Care is a therapeutic alliance between carers, service users and health professionals. It aims to promote safety and recovery and to sustain mental wellbeing by including and supporting carers.
• The Triangle of Care leaflet: A guide to Best Practice in Health Care
  A guide for healthcare professionals on the triangle of care, and how it can help them and carers.

< Back to top

This work was completed as part of the Culture of Care Programme. The work was supported by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Greater Manchester Patient Safety Research Collaboration (GM PSRC) (Grant Reference Number NIHR204295). Leah Quinlivan is fully funded by the NIHR GM PSRC, Pauline Rivart was part funded by the NIHR GM PSRC, and Professor Nav Kapur is part funded by the NIHR GM PSRC.  The views expressed on this webpage are those of the authors and not necessarily those of NICE, NIHR, NHS, or the UK Department of Health and Social Care.