Mental Health Supported Living

“I would like to request the following information for each year for the past three years:-

1.The number of serious incidents* involving children with mental health issues receiving council-funded supported living services.

2.The number of serious incidents* involving adults with mental health issues receiving council-funded supported living services.

3.The number of incidents of self-harm involving children with mental health issues receiving council-funded supported living services.

4.The number of incidents of self-harm involving adults with mental health issues receiving council-funded supported living services.

5.The number of incidents of suicide involving children with mental health issues receiving council-funded supported living services.

6.The number of incidents of suicide involving adults with mental health issues receiving council-funded supported living services.”

Council-funded supporting living services relates to any individuals living independently, ie not in secure homes but who are in receipt of Council-funded care for their mental health issues.

* Serious incidents are any significant recordable events that wouldn’t otherwise be considered suicide or incidents of self-harm.

Children:

We do not hold this information.

We would not be able to identify all children who are in receipt of Council funded care for their mental health issues and living independently.  We would only be able to identify children who are currently looked after who live in supported lodgings placements.  There would be other children who are receiving council funded supported living services that we would be unable to identify from our social care management system.  It would not, therefore, be possible for us to identify a cohort of individual children for their individual records to be checked for incidents of suicide, self-harm or serious incidents.

In addition, even if a cohort were identified, we would not be able to identify those children with mental health issues or suicides/self-harm/serious incidents, as these are not centrally recorded on our children’s social care management system.  To locate, extract and retrieve this information would require individual review of each social care file in the cohort which would be likely to take well in excess of the 18 hours we are required to spend responding to Freedom of Information requests under Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 – ‘Cost of Compliance’.

Adults:

We are unable to supply any information we hold in relation to the above under Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 – ‘Cost of Compliance’.  This is because we are not required to report on this data, and any information held would be within the free text field contained within client observations, so would require a manual review of each individual record to locate, extract and retrieve any information held.

As at 31 March 2019, we had 1,539 people with a Mental Health Primary Support Reason in receipt of long-term services.  In order to ascertain which of these individuals live independently and have undergone a serious incident / self-harm / suicide would require review of each of these records.  On a conservative estimate of 5 minutes per record, we anticipate this would take in the region of 128 hours which is well in excess of the 18 hours public authorities are required to spend responding to FOI requests.

We understand that the Devon Partnership NHS Trust (DPT) is responsible for recording numbers of self harm incidents and suicide involving adults with mental health issues but we do not believe they would be able to correlate that information to identify adults receiving council funded supported living services.  Please contact the DTP using the information on the link provided.