What do schools do about suicidal chat?

[K2togm1]

Does anyone know what will a secondary school do when told about chat between their pupils about suicide?

I imagine it would depend greatly on the context

In my secondary school we report to safeguarding asap, they are not allowed to leave site.

Can you elaborate? Not allowed to go home?

Sorry yeh I should have made that clearer. We wouldn't let them go home until we'd established that it was safe to do so (as in let family know or if family were the issue then social services). We would have to make sure they weren't going to kill themselves on the way home or go missing and do it.

What do you mean by ‘suicidal chat’? Are you saying that multiple pupils have expressed suicidal ideation to each other and school are aware of this? In that case it will be referred to safeguarding lead, parents informed and told to come and collect pupil(s) and take to A&E for assessment. This is what happened when my dd expressed suicidal ideation to a teacher.

They would usually contact the parents and ask them to take the child to the GP etc and ask for an overview of what's happening in the child's life. Sometimes it's external events that can be resolved, other times it can be mental health issues or a combination of the two. The important thing is that the young person gets support to recover from those feelings.

Hope everything's okay OP.

In our case we had a phone call from the school asking if we were aware and could we check with ds if he was serious. I said I will check and then I had to phone school back to say that he had taken an overdose and dh has taken him to a and e. The pastoral teacher sounded really shocked so I don't think she was expecting that.

This sounds utterly terrifying, I'm so sorry.

Thanks, it's not my child, and parents of concerned kid are aware and on the case.

Thanks, kid telling my own of thoughts about it, I just wondered how seriously would school take it.

They would take it seriously. It was the parent of a child who ds had talked to who phoned the school and told them my child had told theirs over email he was going to kill himself. He had been sick once that morning and told me he had a headache so I thought he had a migraine as overdose hadn't crossed my mind at all. When the school phoned I went to talk to ds afterwards and he was starting to lose consciousness. But that phone call from his friend's parent to the school was so important. I would probably have checked in with ds fairly soon anyway as I knew he wasn't well but it was lockdown and I was trying to get 3 dc who wanted to play to do maths instead. And ds was only 12, even after the school called me I thought there was no way he would have taken an overdose. I will always be grateful to that other parent who phoned the school.