Agenda item

The Suicide Prevention Programme plans to bring the draft new Suicide & Self-Harm Prevention Strategy for Kent & Medway (2026-2030) to the Medway Health & Wellbeing Board.

The new Strategy was drafted in summer 2025 following more than a year of stakeholder engagement. The strategy went out to formal public consultation from 23 July to 6 October 2025.

A report which summarises the key findings from the consultation (the consultation report) is currently being prepared. When complete, this will help to determine what changes need to be made to the draft strategy.  As the consultation report has not yet been finalised, a draft Executive Summary is included in the board papers for discussion.

Discussion :

The Senior Project Officer, Kent and Medway Suicide Prevention Programme (KCC Public Health) introduced the report and informed the Board that the Strategy had been developed in conjunction with the network which was made up of approximately 250 members. This was a single strategy for children and adults which had specifics for each cohort.  Whist this was a draft document, it was not anticipated that there would be significant changes to the final document and was a good reflection of what the final document would contain, and the public consultation period showed a strong level of support for the content.

Members raised a number of questions and comments which included:

Suicide rates - concern was raised that in the last 5 years, approximately 750 lives had been lost as a result of suicide in Kent and Medway, with 75% being men and 14% being under the age of 25.

Collective approach - the collective focus on prevention was the right approach, and it was important for all services to be mindful as to how and what support was put in place, to create a safe space to enable people to speak up and seek support.

Social media - additionally, continuous lobbying for restrictions on social media was vital due to the detrimental effects on young people’s mental health and those that were neurodiverse. The officer in attendance commented that the first national suicide strategy was in 2002 and there had been significant growth of the agenda. There were also various initiatives targeted at men to break through the stigma associated with prevalence of suicide in men.

Medway - it was noted that this report was a Kent and Medway report, and it was asked what specific plans were in place to address issues in Medway, given that Medway had its own specific challenges, as its suicide rates were higher than that of Kent. The Board was informed that the data in the report was data from the 2024 publication of the Office of National Statistics and that in the recent publication from September 2025, Kent and Medway data showed a decline.

However, it was vital to be careful not to rely on statistics as data was recorded in different ways. The key message was to be proactive with activities and ensure that responses were reactive, in particular, if a trend was noticed in specific areas and demographics, for targeted work to take place such as increased communications on access to support. The priority and focus was on supporting as many people as possible and investment on preventative work. It was however difficult to measure impact as the number of lives lost would always be known as the data is quantifiable, but the amount of suicides prevented was not always known unless people chose to share that they had felt suicidal.

The Head of Health and Wellbeing Services added that that whist there were challenges working across Kent and Medway, this was a Kent and Medway Strategy that benefitted from a strong partnership approach, with 3 weekly meetings across the network. There was strong working relationships with Network Rail, who actively engaged in learning, and the security guards at the Pentagon were to be commended for their hard work and efforts which were recently recognised at the Better Medway Awards. The current data (from the 2025 publication by the Office of National Statistics) showed that there had been a decline in suicides within Medway from 12, to 10.3 per 100,000 of the population of Medway.

Self harm – in response to comments on the prevalence of self-harm in young people as it had been noted that hospital admission for self-harm was higher than the national average, the Director of Public Health informed the Board that a project on self-harm between 10 – 24 years olds had just been completed. A briefing note would be shared on the findings and consideration was being given to the usefulness of the digital offer for the age group on emotional regulation and self-harm.

Training – it was asked that as this strategy was multiagency would mandatory training be put in place, in particular for front line staff. The Board was informed that Suicide Awareness training had been commissioned, which was not mandatory, but all partners were being encouraged to take part and promote it within their organisations. This training was not just for professionals and could be accessed by anyone in the community. It was vital that everyone should be equipped to feel confident to talk about suicide and develop the skills to ask appropriate questions.

Decision:

The Board noted the report.