Happy #workplacewellbeingwednesday to our followers. Here at Be. The Be. The Centre for Wellbeing at MEA House we are preparing to deliver Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (ASIST) with me, Emma Carhart and Neil Gregory as the instructors. I thought it would be a good chance to share a little more information about the ASIST course on the eve of delivering it here at Be.
ASIST is an internationally recognised two day workshop that teaches participants to carry out life-saving interventions for people At risk of suicide. It is one several programs created by an organisations called Livingworks who are the world leaders in suicide intervention training. Their interactive, practical workshops support suicide prevention initiatives all over the world. The strength of the ASIST workshop is that is has the belief that ANYONE can learn the skills to save a life - it is not the exclusive right of those who work in professional caring or support roles to learn to be an ASIST caregiver and be able to complete a suicide intervention in their community.
ASIST trainers have to complete an intensive 5 days training for trainers (T4T) ran by LivingWorks, present workshops regularly and submit continuous quality assurance reports to reassure LivingWorks that they are maintaining the integrity of the ASIST program. As a training professional with an education degree, I can honestly say that the T4T experience was the best professional development I have ever received in my career from the LivingWorks Team. Their coaching and development has enabled me to facilitate the ASIST workshop in a way that is both supportive but challenging. I work in the field that I do because of my lived experience of mental health problems which has included experiencing suicidal thoughts. A strength of this workshop is that it supports facilitators to share this experience in a safe way to explore the groups attitude around suicide, but also as a way to encourage participants to reflect on any of their personal experiences of suicide and link them into how this relates to them becoming an ASIST caregiver.
LivingWorks have a mission to create suicide safe communities in which people feel able to talk to others about their. ASIST sits within a bigger catalogue of training interventions. I am also an approved safeTALK trainer. SafeTALK is a half day workshop which aims to create suicide alert helpers by sharing information about how to become suicide alert, how to ask the question about suicide and how to increase the safety of the person at risk. It complements the ethos of creating a suicide safer community by encouraging both safeTALK suicide alert helpers and ASIST caregivers to exist alongside each other.
As an organisation Be. are incredibly encouraged by those organisations we are working with, like International organisation ZF TRW, who are committed to creating suicide safer work communities and have invested time and money to train their staff in both ASIST and safeTALK.
Look out on our social media pages for photographs of our ASIST workshop over the next few days.
We are running a further ASIST workshop in May 2018 here at MEA House, Newcastle and are happy to discuss with organisations running in-house workshops exclusively for their staff.
Please see the below link for further information about ASIST with Be. The Centre for Wellbeing in May:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/asist-applied-suicide-intervention-skills-training-tickets-41014164470
If you need to talk to someone about thoughts of suicide you may be having, please reach out to someone like
Samaritans Freephone 116 123 available 24 hrs/7 days. Email jo@samaritans.org