James Browne
Question:64. Deputy James Browne asked the Minister for Health the status of both the national and local implementation plans on Connecting for Life. [20748/17]
View answerWednesday, 3 May 2017
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Connecting for Life is Ireland’s National Strategy to Reduce Suicide 2015 – 2020. It sets out a vision where fewer lives are lost through suicide, and where communities and individuals are empowered to improve their mental health and wellbeing. This vision is to be realised through seven goals. These are better understanding of suicidal behaviour; supporting communities to prevent and respond to suicidal behaviour; targeted approaches for those vulnerable to suicide; improved access, consistency and integration of services; safe and high-quality services; reduce access to means; and better data and research.
The Cross-Sectoral Connecting for Life Implementation Steering Group was established in 2015 in response to the actions set out in Connecting for Life, the national strategy to reduce suicide. This strategy contains a detailed and clear plan to achieve each of the goals it proposes, with defined actions and a lead agency and key partners in place for each individual action. As a whole of government strategy, Connecting for Life requires cross-sectoral leadership, resource structures and teams for implementation.
The structures exist at national, organisational and local level and include the National Office for Suicide Prevention (NOSP), to oversee the implementation of Connecting for Life; the National Cross-Sectoral Steering and Implementation Group, with responsibility for high-level implementation planning and addressing national blockages to implementation; a National Taskforce on Youth Mental Health, convened to consider how best to introduce and teach resilience and coping mechanisms to children and young people, and to provide national leadership on youth mental health and well-being; a Pathfinder project, which is providing the mechanism for shared whole-of-government approach to youth mental health and suicide prevention; a cross-departmental group consisting of the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment, The Press Council and NOSP focused on improving the reporting of suicidal behaviour within the media; and a multi-agency Central Statistics Office Liaison Group on suicide mortality statistics.
The 23 lead agencies responsible for actions report twice per year to NOSP on progress against Actions (Action Reporting Template). NOSP collates the activities and provides a report to the National Implementation Group. The most recent return of this template, in November 2016, showed the number of actions for which progress was achieved in November 2016 was 65 of 69, amounting to 94%.
The majority of the actions within Connecting for Life will be delivered by the HSE (44 of the 66 individual lead agency actions). The HSE Cross-Divisional Implementation Group (Primary Care, Acute Hospitals, Health and Wellbeing, Mental Health and NOSP) is fully operational. Oversight is provided by the HSE National Leadership Team. This committee has established structures and processes to agree a HSE cross-divisional Connecting for Life Implementation Plan.
Additionally, as part of this national strategy, local implementation plans for each CHO either have been or are being developed. There will be 26 local suicide prevention action plans by Quarter four, 2017, and work has commenced in all of the nine CHO areas on these.