Suicide is a phenomenon that devastates communities the world over. So, it makes sense that to have an impact on suicide, we need to skill up community representatives to roll out suicide prevention skills to their communities.
We are putting communities centre stage in the fight to prevent suicide. The Wise Steps Gatekeeper training has been hugely successful in providing both communities and front-line operatives with skills to support a person who may be having thoughts of suicide. It is a four stepped approach that is simple to adopt and is based on best practice being developed by specialists in the fields of suicide prevention, mental wellbeing, and community engagement.
The developers at Common Unity and Forward For Life recognise that the best approach is to work alongside people from specific communities to tailor this training and then cascade this learning across communities. In short, ensuring that suicide prevention training ‘speaks’ to those communities.
With the support of Birmingham City Council’s Public Health team and the backing of Public Health England, the Wise Steps Community Connector Programme is being delivered to representatives from those communities who not only are learning the skills to support people with thoughts of suicide, but also provides those representatives to adapt the learning that is right for their communities.
We’d like to thank the following contributors to this video:
Razia Hadait – Himaya Haven
Barbara Labrosse – The Archdiocese of Birmingham
Amy Howard – Freelance Wellbeing Officer
Dana Klampárová – Czech & Slovak Club UK
For more information about this programme or the work we do please get in touch.
m. 07901705801
