Creating Hope Together: Year 3 Delivery Plan - 2025-2026

Outcome 4

Our approach to suicide prevention is well planned and delivered, through close collaboration between national, local and sectoral partners. Our work is designed with lived experience insight, practice, data, research and intelligence. We improve our approach through regular monitoring, evaluation and review.

Short term outcome: People, who may be suicidal or affected by suicide in any way, have more equitable access to appropriate, high quality, effective support - to prevent suicide and promote wellbeing and recovery; particularly focussed on reducing the inequalities that affect suicidal behaviour.

Action

6.1 – suicide action plans in high risk settings

What we’ve done so far

Worked with identified high risk settings to:

• Develop a clearer understanding of current suicide prevention planning across high-risk settings.
• Develop a clearer understanding of how to effectively support organisations to further develop and embed suicide prevention planning.
• Develop a suicide prevention action plan framework.

Identified employers across public and private sectors to develop and test a suicide prevention focus as part of the mentally flourishing workplace framework.

Actions and milestones 2025/26

Summer 2025:

High risk settings:

Engage with identified sectors (custody, housing and secure care) to consider how and where they could develop/enhance their suicide prevention activities that respond to the needs of their sector.

Develop and test a range of approaches and processes that support the planning, review, prioritisation and delivery of suicide prevention actions that enable high risk settings to respond to a public health approach to suicide prevention.

Co-produce supporting resources, universal and sector specific, to aid shared learning and potential application to other sectors.

Co-develop workplace focused suicide prevention case studies in partnership with employers and people with lived and living experience.

Support Mentally Flourishing Workplaces to develop workplace focused suicide prevention case studies, in partnership with local suicide prevention stakeholders (including those with lived experience and employers).

Summer 2025

Develop and publish a Mentally Flourishing Workplace Framework which includes suicide prevention.

Winter 2025/26

Develop and publish Suicide prevention workplace focused case studies.

Indicative budget to support delivery

£12,000

Action

6.2 Further develop guidelines on suicide clusters

What we’ve done so far

Supported local areas to utilise the cluster response guidance in response to identified clusters and shared learning of this.

Scoping work undertaken to begin process to develop specific guidance for children and young people, drawing on the use of the guidance on suicide clusters.

Connected to tests of change in communities (action 5.2).

Actions and milestones 2025/26

Autumn/ winter 2025

Complete stakeholder engagement to enhance current guidance on cluster responses involving children and young people.

Continue to support local implementation of guidance and share learning at local and national levels.

Publish updated cluster guidance.

Indicative budget to support delivery

Included in PHS Outcome Lead funding

Short term outcome: Lived experience insight and other sources of data and intelligence are more effectively collected, shared and used in planning, design, implementation and evaluation of suicide prevention interventions.

Action

6.3 – lived experience model

What we’ve done so far

Based on recommendations from the evaluation of the Lived Experience Panel, refreshed and supported new members onto the Lived and Living Experience Panel.

Continued to support and engage with the Youth Advisory Group and the Participation Network.

Ensured active involvement of these groups in the development and design of all areas of work across the action plan.

Established the Lived and Living Experience Steering Group to oversee the approach to inclusion of lived and living experience.

Continued to work alongside organisations who support people who face stigma, discrimination and the inequalities associated with increased suicide risk to ensure their experiences help to shape the work.

Actions and milestones 2025/26

Continued engagement with all groups.

Autumn 2025

Undertake evaluation of the YAG model.

Winter 2025/26

Lived experience section of the local area toolkit published.

Indicative budget to support delivery

LLEP - £140,00

YAG - £74,000

Action

6.4 – improve recording of suicide deaths and attempts

What we’ve done so far

Reviewed current systems recording suicide deaths and attempts to assess gaps and potential solutions to support better integration of data, to achieve a greater understanding of the contributing factors for suicide in Scotland.

Brought together different data sources to provide improved picture of suicide (e.g. from helplines, assessment processes; routine datasets etc) in order to drive more tailored and responsive preventative action.

Developed localised and themed analyses of ScotSID datasets that highlight key characteristics of suicide deaths and what supports change.

Worked with data providers/users and other partners to explore how best to provide improved data on inequalities in suicide and develop opportunities to utilise this data to inform practice and improvements.

Supported quality assurance and usage of National Records of Scotland confirmed suicide data and Police Scotland suspected suicide data to drive local action.

Explored the potential for data sharing between partners in key settings (e.g. education, police, social work, admission to and from liberation from Scottish Prison Service) on suicidal behaviour among young people.

Facilitate improved linkages with existing datasets – e.g. bring together ScotSID, more timely data, NRS, unscheduled care, prescribing with wider inequalities datasets e.g. Gender Based Violence, alcohol and drugs (potentially ongoing).

Actions and milestones 2025/26

Throughout 2025/26

Explore data linking opportunities across data on equalities (initial focus on race and ethnicity), housing, care experience and other key populations and Scottish Suicide Information Database (ScotSID) datasets.

Reincorporate drugs and alcohol data into ScotSID reports.

Publish ScotSID report on epidemiological trends around deaths by suicide.

Share knowledge and practical use of data at national and local level through data focused podcast release.

Share learning from exploration of race and ethnicity data deep dive.

Connect with work on action 5.10 to support data collection opportunities.

Continue to provide local stakeholders with more timely data summaries utilising National Records of Scotland (NRS) data to best effect.

Publish data section of the Local area toolkit.

Support interpretation and use of national data to local and national stakeholders, and to all partners delivering this action plan.

Indicative budget to support delivery

Included in PHS Outcome Lead funding

Action

6.5 Horizon scanning

What we’ve done so far

Developed a test horizon scanning report on safety planning.

Actions and milestones 2025/26

Summer 2025

Agree with AAG an approach to horizon scanning which could triangulate academic, practice and lived experience inputs to develop quarterly briefings.

Indicative budget to support delivery

Included in core funding for AAG

Action

6.6 – roll out suicide reviews and learning system

What we’ve done so far

Continue to roll out the suicide review system working with nine local authority areas to implement the QES recording system and support a learning approach to suicide reviews. This includes a peer support mechanism and development of PHS data extraction arrangements.

Connected with Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS) on their work around Significant Adverse Event Reviews relating to suicide.

Connected with HIS and the Care Inspectorate around their Child Death Hub work.

Share ongoing learning from testing of suicide reviews across national and local level, including how it is supporting service redesign.

Actions and milestones 2025/26

Throughout 2025/26

Provide ongoing opportunities for shared learning between QES current and potential adopters.

Continued advocacy for QES system adoption with local suicide prevention stakeholders using feedback from existing adopters.

Explore options for identifying how suicide attempts could be captured as part of test of change (using a key population group).

Agree national data governance and extraction processes to support PHS national report production in place.

Indicative budget to support delivery

£60,000 PHS data management staff

£56,724 QES

Action

6.7 Build capacity, disseminate information and share learning on suicide prevention between and across sectors and support for evaluation

What we’ve done so far

Held a range of events and learning opportunities at national, regional, local and sectoral levels which include:

• organisations working with marginalised communities.
• third sector/ charitable organisations.
• local suicide prevention leads.
• people working across different sectors.

Engaged suicide prevention network to agree approach to future network sessions.

Delivered monthly local suicide prevention leads drop in meetings and provided support for local areas through the suicide prevention implementation leads and capacity building leads.

Delivered a Bi-monthly newsletter, regular blogs, publications and updates through suicide prevention medium page and social media.

The AAG continued to provide evidence informed resources to support the Delivery Plan implementation and have undertaken an audit of existing academic activities on suicide prevention across Scotland.

Monitoring and Evaluation

Supported evaluation and monitoring and where appropriate developed and test tools/review systems.

Facilitated sharing of learning between national and local partners and across key settings.

Worked with Matter of Focus to develop monitoring and evaluation guidance for use by local suicide prevention leads and stakeholders in high risk settings.

Lead work with Matter of Focus to embed outcome focused recording and reporting as part of national activities with clear indicators showing progress against short term outcomes.

Actions and milestones 2025/26

Throughout 2025/ 2026

Planning and delivery of audience focused events including:

• Annual CHT conference.
• Side by Side After Suicide conference for those with lived and living experience.
• Gathering Hope for third sector partners.

Further develop role of Suicide Prevention Scotland Network as overarching framework for sharing learning across action plan.

Suicide Prevention Scotland bimonthly newsletter published.

Continued support for local suicide prevention leads including peer support.

Planned series of learning events/outputs across Delivery Plan activities developed and promoted (includes podcasts, guidance updates on clusters; memorials and locations of concern; evidence reviews, Learning Needs Analysis Tool, Impact Evaluation Tool).

New suicide prevention campaign and website launched which includes resources for professionals working in suicide prevention.

Local suicide prevention planning and implementation toolkit covering action planning, lived and living experience, data and intelligence, monitoring and evaluation and postvention activity published.

Monitoring and Evaluation

Matter of Focus commissioned to support the reporting processes associated with the CHT delivery plan and the development of annual reports and other associated outputs.

Produce Creating Hope Together Annual Report for 2025/26 supported by OutNAV reporting processes.

Learning from monitoring processes inform next 3 year action plan.

Indicative budget to support delivery

£405,367