Burnham backs mandatory suicide prevention training for social workers

Prime Minister Andy Burnham has said he supports extending suicide prevention training to all local authorities in England, the councils that run local services, including social care. He said so at prime minister's questions, the weekly Commons session in which MPs put questions to the prime minister, after a question about the death of Matilda Davis, according to The Guardian.

The question came from Manuela Perteghella, the Liberal Democrat MP for Stratford-upon-Avon. She raised Davis's case in the House of Commons and asked Burnham to meet her and the family to discuss making suicide prevention training mandatory for local authorities. Burnham said he would ensure that a minister met Perteghella to discuss the proposal, because he agreed with it.

Davis's brother, Joel Harley-Davis, said the family was reassured by Burnham's response.

Davis was 36. She was a parent-carer, meaning a parent who cares for a family member, and a former art teacher. She died by suicide on 3 October 2025, minutes after an emotional meeting with social workers who had not received suicide prevention training. The inquest into her death, held in March, heard that she died at her home in Stratford-upon-Avon.

At the inquest, social workers admitted that they had not asked Davis whether she had suicidal thoughts, and that she had not been directed to crisis organisations.

Coroner Deborah Sewell then issued a prevention of future deaths notice, a formal order coroners can issue when they believe action is needed to stop similar deaths. It was a rare step, and it directed Warwickshire council to make suicide prevention training mandatory for 600 staff, primarily social workers.

Perteghella cited University of Birmingham research showing that 41 per cent of parent-carers have contemplated suicide. Two days before she died, Davis had posted on Facebook a study finding that more than 40 per cent of parent-carers had considered suicide, according to The Guardian's August reporting.

The Guardian first revealed Davis's case in August 2026, reporting that she had taken her life after feeling failed by England's social care system.