On 10th September Grassroots Suicide Prevention Project marked the World Suicide Prevention Day with an event where they awarded YMCA DLG with a certificate recognizing our work to become a suicide safer organisation.
For the past 18 months YMCA DLG has been working on an action plan, developed with Grassroots, to become a Suicide Safer organisation.
This has included the following:
– Continuing to offer ASIST courses (suicide intervention 2 day training) to staff
– Offering Safe Talk courses (half day) to staff
– Offering Safe Talk courses to young people that we work with too as we know it is a whole community approach that is needed for prevention work
– Working on a new Wellbeing policy to be launched over the next quarter
– Monitoring and reporting on our safeguarding work
The certificate was awarded to Rachel Brett (Director of Communities, and our Designated Safeguarding Officer) and El Clarke (Quality and Participation Manager) who represented YMCA DLG at the event. They both gave short speeches with El highlighting some of the work we have done to become a safer organisation, and Rachel explaining the safeguarding element of our work.
Thanks to ASIST training many of our staff can now offer suicide interventions to service users and over the last quarter they have helped 25 young people.
