Publish date: 20 October 2025
In April 2025, NHS England published new guidelines titled "Staying safe from suicide." These guidelines introduce a significant shift in how the needs of service users and patients are assessed. The main change is moving away from traditional risk assessments (which rate risk as high, medium, or low) to a focus on safety assessments conversations to understand what makes them unsafe and what we can do to improve their safety.
Impact on our training
Mersey Care has delivered Risk Assessment training for the past four years through the ERISK training modules. With the new guidelines, the content and messaging of ERISK training needs to be updated. This includes renaming the training and revising its content to align with the new safety assessment approach.
Help shape the future
If you have previously completed ERISK training or have assessed services users in your role your input is needed! We are hosting two MS Teams sessions on Tuesday, 25 November 2025 to gather feedback and ideas for improving the training. Each session will last 1 to 1.5 hours. Your insights will help shape the updated training package, scheduled for release in April 2026.
Session links:
- 10am Join the meeting now
- 1.30pm Join the meeting now
Please contact the Safe from Suicide team via our email for more information Safefrom
