Suicide Prevention and Intervention IOW (SPIIOW), the Isle of Wight’s frontline suicide prevention charity, has been awarded over £10,000 to run a Youth Project across the Island.
SPIIOW and its appointed trainers, who form part of a network of trainers around the UK and the world, will deliver the suicide awareness training across the Island.
Workshops for over 15-year-olds
With the support from the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Community Foundation, SPIIOW will, over a period of ten months facilitate workshops aimed to be delivered to at least 500 students over the age of 15.
Other funding from this grant will be used to hire a part-time administrator, purchase tailored marketing materials and expertise, alongside hiring a report writer who will collate the project’s feedback, student surveys and progress reports.
Leading the way with ground-breaking new approaches to suicide prevention
Jodie from SPIIOW said,
“The trainers that SPIIOW use are part of network of trainers who for over 35 years, have been leading the way with ground-breaking new approaches to suicide prevention and has driven change with evidence-based programmes, this is not an online course.
“The network of professional trainers, train around 200,000+ people each year, They carry out 192,000+ suicide interventions annually and have trained 2,000,000+ since 1983 with evidence-based programmes and workshops do work and do save lives.
“The trainers have not been able to get back delivering since Covid hit. Now we have received this amazing support we can get back to it.
“We know that there is a lot of stigma and taboo around suicide, this training we deliver makes participants aware of the ‘red flags’ that shows when someone could be at risk of suicide, and that there is no harm in asking.”
Lewis: An absolute godsend for my patients
Tina Lewis, Primary Care Mental Health, added,
“SPIIOW are an absolute godsend for my patients. I work within the mental health sector as an Employment Advisor.
“As a team, we have been lucky enough to receive excellent training skills from SPIIOW to enable us to deal with these situations, with further training booked for new staff.”
Community Engagement
Alongside our normal suicide prevention work, SPIIOW also undertake Community Engagement. This is designed to be a preventative project in areas across the Island, you will often see our team members out and about dressed in the same easily identifiable kit at different times of the day and night.
Community Engagement is a big part of what SPIIOW does, and this is an ongoing project that takes place in our community in the public domain.
Find out more
The team members will very often stop to speak to members of the public at a number of locations, if you see them team out and think that “something is just not right” about someone you can always pass this information on to them. Find out more information on the SPIIOW Website.
If you would like to know more about our team or join them please email [email protected]
News shared by Clare on behalf of SPIIOW. Ed
Image: Elissa Garcia under CC BY 2.0
