– The purpose of this paper is to outline a UK-based interdisciplinary workforce development project that had the aim of improving service delivery for children and young people who self-harm or are feeling suicidal.
– This innovative practice-higher-education partnership utilised an iterative consultation process to establish the local workforce need and then facilitated the systematic synthesis and presentation of evidence-based clinical guidelines in a practical format, for staff working directly with young people who self-harm in non-mental health settings.
– The development, content and structure of this contextualised resource is presented, along with emerging outcomes and learning from the team. It is anticipated that this may also be a useful strategy and resource for other teams in other areas and is intended to provide a template that can be adapted by other localities to meet the specific needs of their own workforce.
– The paper demonstrates how higher education-practice partnerships can make clinical guidelines and research evidence in a field often thought of as highly specialist, accessible to all staff. It also shows a process of liaison and enhanced understanding across universal/specialist mental health service thresholds.
– This paper demonstrates how collaborative partnerships can work to bridge the gap between evidence-based guidelines and their implementation in practice, through innovative multi-agency initiatives.
