Protect Life 2: Pre-consultation for suicide prevention and post-vention services-Stakeholder Engagement Report

In September 2019, the Department of Health published a new suicide prevention strategy for Northern Ireland known as Protect Life 2. 

The strategy includes specific actions which the Public Health Agency (PHA) is responsible for delivering. The agency is now undertaking a pre-consultation on these suicide prevention and post-vention services.

In order for the PHA to develop future services to meet identified actions, it is important to review current services and most importantly listen to the views of service users, local communities and other organisations delivering services, through this pre-consultation process.

The Public Health Agency (PHA) commissioned Insight Solutions to deliver a number of online facilitated events which took place between 15th February and 11th April 2021. 

 Six online stakeholder engagement events took place with 154 attendees. A further 2 focus groups were requested with a particular focus on the needs of Irish Travellers and minority ethnic communities(14)  and for those who identified at LGBTQI+ (5) with a further 19 participants.  The online survey was completed by 99 individuals completed and 3 responses were received by email form membership based organisations.

The events were publicly advertised and the information about the events was distributed by the PHA to all relevant stakeholders including current service providers, commissioners, clinicians, service users, carers and family members. 

This report attached provides a summary of the stakeholder engagement events including highlights of the main points/issues raised and builds on previous work completed in 2018. 

All comments received have been treated equally. The report does not rank or prioritise comments.