The Horizon Suicide Prevention team work with professionals supporting children who are at risk of hospitalisation and experiencing:
- suicidality
- self-harm
- mental health conditions.
The core function of the team is to promote suicide prevention and upskill the workforce to recognise their role in safeguarding children who are in crisis. We help them work holistically, understanding that suicide prevention can be influenced by multiple factors
We understand that a child’s family life, education, friendships and lived experiences can all influence children’s emotional wellbeing.
We accept referrals from Children’s Social Care and Early Help teams.
How we work with your social worker
When a referral is made we will offer a consultation and advice to develop:
- an understanding of the child’s needs
- risk management
- safety planning
- interventions
Consultations provide a reflective space for the professionals that support you. Recognising the role they have in promoting suicide prevention and safeguarding children from harm related to their mental wellbeing.
Our team of highly skilled social workers take a biopsychosocial model approach to suicidality and mental health, recognising that many factors can impact on children’s wellbeing including biological, psychological and social factors.
We utilise their knowledge of the Mental Health Act 1983 and local health resources. These help us advise teams to develop effective discharge plans for children in hospital. Promoting recovery and reduce the risk of future hospitalisation. The team provides practice oversight relating to aftercare and can work with networks to develop strong partnership responses to children following a mental health crisis.
We support wider children’s service teams including fostering and care leaving services through training to increase understanding around mental health and emotional wellbeing.
For education settings we chair and facilitate the Multi-Agency Mental Health and Education Triage (MAMHET). This is a partnership panel that provides triage discussions to plan for children who have been identified as being at risk of suicide or self-harm. The triage team consists of representatives from:
- Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
- Police
- Youth Emotional Support
- Early Help
This brings together services that support educational settings to develop responses to children and young people experiencing suicidality. MAMHET is an award-winning risk management partnership that shares a collective ethos of reducing suicides of children within West Sussex. Its success has been adopted across Sussex and within the West Sussex Suicide Prevention Strategy.
We also provide an ‘in school’ response as part of the responding to an unexpected death toolkit when there is a death from a suspected suicide of a child within the community. We utilise our partnerships across health, police and social care to support schools and youth community services to provide sensitive and considerate responses in the sad instance a child dies unexpectedly. We work extensively with school communities to identify children impacted by an unexpected death and ensure they have the support they need to reduce the long-term impact of their bereavement.
How we work with you
Our work usually supports the professionals to work with families. In appropriate circumstances we can provide bespoke short-term intervention through your child and family worker for children experiencing crisis. The allocation of this support is identified through consultation with the child’s lead professional.