Reorienting the Way a Community Mental Health Service Responds to Suicide and Other Serious Incidents

Suicide and other serious incidents involving users of mental health services can have a deep and lasting effect on staff members who have been involved in the person’s care. It is important for the service to ensure that staff can learn and improve from these incidents while also minimizing the negative impacts on workers. One service has developed an innovative approach to reviewing and responding to serious incidents, using a dialogically informed, learning circle approach, based on the principles of restorative justice. This approach seeks to support staff to manage workplace stress and distress, while also acknowledging the person involved in the incident as well as the rights and needs of the family members and friends. It is intended that such an approach, rather than blaming staff, seeks to support them and build a service in which it is safe to practice in a person-centred, non-defensive way. This paper reports on the experiences of staff within this service who have taken part in this serious incident review process, and provides support for the roll out of the model as well as highlighting some of the pitfalls and difficulties in implementing such a model within current service structure guidelines. The project found that having a process which was supporting and not punitive enabled staff to feel supported to remain in the workforce and to improve their practice within a supportive, learning-oriented organisation.