Internationally, preventing suicide in children and young people is a priority and there are a range of preventative approaches available for health professionals to use, including brief interventions. Safety planning is one such brief intervention. Safety plans have long been recommended for use with young people who are suicidal but, these were initially developed for adults. A recent scoping review revealed safety plans need to be tailored to children and young people. This review also identified an important practice gap, that parents also require plans supporting them to keep their child safe.
Purpose
This paper highlights how a Scottish clinical child and adolescent mental health setting in the UK's National Health Service developed and implemented evidence-based safety plans for suicidality–the Lothian Safety Plan for young people and the Lothian Safekeeping Plan for parents. This paper outlines both plans and gives recommendations for their use by healthcare professionals. The parental Lothian Safekeeping Plan is discussed in more depth as this is a novel intervention.
Conclusion
The Lothian Safekeeping Plan is a clinically led evidence-based practice innovation. It is a specific suicide prevention plan for use by parents as an additional, complementary, and enhanced resource to the Lothian Safety Plan for young people. It is recommended that healthcare professionals also use a parental safety plan when supporting young people presenting with suicidal crisis. Further research is needed to evaluate the impact of these plans.
期刊介绍:
Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Nursing (JCAPN) is the only nursing journal to focus exclusively on issues of child and adolescent mental health around the world. As a primary resource for nurses and other healthcare professionals in clinical practice, educator roles, and those conducting research in mental health and psychiatric care, the journal includes peer-reviewed, original articles from a wide range of contributors in a broad variety of settings.