The Murrumbidgee region has a well-established region wide approach to suicide prevention and aftercare. This started in 2018 with key stakeholders coming together to understand the current suicide prevention landscape, any gaps and areas of focus to support an integrated and regional approach to suicide prevention and aftercare. One identified gap was the lack of a group of agencies tasked with responding to suicides and critical incidents. In response to this gap, the Murrumbidgee Local Response Group (LRG) was formed comprising of NSW Police, NSW Ambulance, Murrumbidgee Primary Health Network, Murrumbidgee Local Health District and WellWays.
LRG members were selected due to being key agencies in the region who are well connected to communities and have established roles in either responding to suicides and critical incidents or providing supports after events.
The LRG has a communications and response protocol which guides the work of the LRG to ensure timely and coordinate supports are put into place and to improve community capacity to minimise the risk of contagion following an event.
First responders are critical to the work and success of the LRG. Police respond to all events and can provide critical information to enable the support agency to connect with people impacted in a timely and coordinated way. An added benefit to this multiagency approach is close connections with first responders adding and additional layer of support and protective factors for first responders who are often impacted by events themselves especially given we are a rural region.
The partnerships with local, state and national agencies and our communities have all been critical for our now well-established suicide prevention and aftercare approach.
We would like to share the evolvement of our model which required reflection, refinement and building in sustainability so a complex system is made easier for our communities.
Delegates will learn how important integration is during the response to a suicide event or critical incident. The presentation will outline the steps taken to initially create and then maintain the Communications and Response Protocol. The protocol outlines the formation of the Local Response Group, including the Response Coordinator and Tier 1 and Tier 2 membership. It will also talk to how the Tier 1 and Tier 2 members are activated in the response, including opportunities to debrief post the initial response phase, and before the response is deactivated.