What is Barnet’s Caring Connection?

This comprehensive and interactive one-day course is designed to develop the suicide intervention and prevention skills of professionals and volunteers working in front-line services, enabling them to identify, engage, and collaboratively provide safety planning to people at risk of suicide.

The course integrates trauma-informed strategies and aligns with Health Education England and NICE guidelines. Through the imparting of practical knowledge, the use of training videos, tailored exercises and case studies, participants will grow their confidence to engage in compassionate conversation and support safety planning.

Who is it for?

The course is aimed at Barnet professionals and volunteers working in public facing and/or support services. The case studies and signposting resources provided will be tailored to Barnet.

What are the learning objectives?

By the end of this one-day course, facilitated to encourage a safe and effective learning environment, participants will be able to:

· Examine some of their attitudes about suicide

· Explain what being trauma-informed means

· List a range of factors that might increase the risk of suicide

· Identify potential warning signs that someone might have thoughts of suicide

· Explain the limitations of suicide-risk screening tools

· Discuss the principles of and possible steps in assessment when working with someone at risk

· List potential barriers to stable engagement and ways of addressing these

· Familiarise themselves with a range of questions that could be used to assess risk and promote strengths

· Determine appropriate levels of support (emergency services or support organisations/apps) and deploy appropriate technology such as the Stay Alive app in supporting people at risk of suicide

· Practice engaging someone in a conversation about suicide using a framework

· Collaborate with a person at risk to develop a safety plan using a scenario

· Discuss and construct ways of increasing their resilience

Feedback

“I found the modelling of trauma-informed conversations so helpful. I feel I now know how to support effectively someone at risk. The trainer was an encyclopaedia of knowledge and really boosted our learning while consolidating our previous knowledge/training”

“The videos and activities were excellent. I now have simple but highlight effective tools to deal with such a sensitive issue. The pre-course reading material was very comprehensive and have given me so much to refer back over the next few months. “

N.B.

We know that suicide can be a difficult topic and recommend you set aside time for self-care and reflection before and after the day-long session. We won’t ask you to share personal experiences, though the training may bring up things for you that relate to your own life, or that are uncomfortable. We welcome letting someone know you are attending the course and to nominate a person you can talk to, should you find any aspect of the training distressing.

You can find an extensive list of support resources our StayAlive app, available for you or anyone you are worried about: www.stayalive.app/find-help-now

If you have been closely affected by any of these issues or feel that this may be challenging at this time, we would invite you to consider your relationship to the topic and give us a call before booking your place.

Caring Connections - Barnet