Health services and charities are coming together with the council to spread awareness about suicide prevention.

Rotherham Council has provided an update on their mission to make suicide prevention everyone’s responsibility.

Rotherham’s 2025-28 Suicide Prevention Plan is aligned with the government’s national strategy to prevent suicides across the country.

In 2023 the government published a five-year, cross-sector strategy on suicide prevention for England.

The aims of the action plan to make suicide prevention everyone’s responsibility also includes supporting those bereaved, affected, and exposed to suicide, reducing suicides amongst high-risk groups by reaching people where they live and work, and using data to measure suicide prevention in Rotherham.

Health services are committing to delivering Rotherham’s Action Plan alongside communities and those with lived experience.

A recent presentation by public health specialist Ruth Fletcher-Brown, showed the work that had started across the borough.

Some of this work includes:

A suicide prevention workshop was held as part of Safeguarding Awareness Week in November, 2025.
Staff from Rotherham delivered training on autism and suicide prevention, and were guest speakers at the North East, Yorkshire and Humber Police Negotiator Conference in February, 2026.
Papyrus has been commissioned to deliver their SPEAK (Suicide Prevention Explore, Ask, Keep-Safe) course, which is available to schools and colleges.
‘Be the One Autism and Suicide Prevention Campaign’ was launched in September, 2025 with involvement from Speak Up, RDASH, and the former Rotherham Adult Neurodiversity Support Service.
The ‘Sudden and Traumatic Bereavement Pathway’ for children and young people has been updated.
Walk with Us Resource was produced with children and young people who were bereaved by suicide, and has been sent out again to schools and colleges in Rotherham.
72 staff from across Rotherham Partner organisations attended a workshop in May, 2026 about talking to children who have been bereaved.
Work with national organisations like National Highways and British Transport Police to monitor specific locations is ongoing.

Official national suicide prevention data should be available in September, 2026, along with the real-time South Yorkshire data in September or October, 2026.

The latest available data showed that Rotherham has seen an increase in suicides from 12.6 per 100,000 people in 2021-23, to 13.3 per 100,000 people in 2022-24.

However the rate is statistically similar to the average for England at 10.9 per 100,000 people.

Rotherham mirrors the national data with males accounting for most of the deaths to suicide in the borough. The rate has slightly increased in the period of 2022-24 to 19.0 per 100,000 people, compared to 17.2 per 100,000 in 2021-23.

The national average for males in England is 16.8 per 100,000.

For females in Rotherham, the rate in 2022-24 is 7.8 per 100,000 people, which has dropped from 8.1 per 100,000 in 2021-23, which is statistically similar to England at 5.5 per 100,000 people.

When life is difficult, Samaritans is here – day or night, 365 days a year. You can call them for free on 116 123, email them at [email protected], or visit www.samaritans.org to find your nearest branch.