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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.