Author: Terry Rigby, Company Director – Published 2014

We made the right choice when we went with Forward For Life and Common Unity

We want to be the best we can be when we deliver our suicide prevention training and our evaluations to date have always been very positive. But these evaluations had always been based on training at a local level being in the West Midlands – but the Suicide Prevention training in Hertfordshire was a completely new experience – completely outside of our normal stomping ground. We had been given the opportunity to work alongside the Hertfordshire County Council Public Health Service and agree the delivery of both half-day safeTALK courses and the two day internationally renowned ASIST course across the County with the vision of supporting Hertfordshire to become suicide safer.

So, in March, Forward For Life and Common Unity delivered the safeTALK course to over 100 delegates in 3 venues over 3 days through 4 safeTALK courses. Prior to this experience, we were somewhat concerned that such an ask may be too much to take on with suicide prevention training being so demanding on facilitators and some delegates in respect of the subject matter and the time frame – in addition to this Hertfordshire was an area that we had not worked in at any level before.

Ours fears though, it seems, were unwarranted with direct positive feedback from safeTALK delegates on the day being further backed up with great evaluation feedback. Similarly the ASIST course held in April went extremely well with the added benefit that the ASIST delegates agreed amongst themselves to establish a network for Suicide Prevention for the County utilising the skills they had learned so support people with suicidal behaviour to find reasons for living.

As always, we provided a report overview at the end of the training – and with the permission of the Director of Public Health for Hertfordshire County Council we have made available this report below.

Jim McManus, The Director of Public Health for Hertfordshire County Council had this to say about the experience – 

” we made the right choice when we went with Forward For Life and Common Unity. They understood our needs and aims, worked with us flexibly on getting a diverse set of people trained and produced a first class, professional product. Feedback from participants has been excellent and we will definitely use them again.” 

Forward For Life and Common Unity want to thank Hertfordshire County Council Public Health Service for the opportunity to engage with so many inspiring front line health and social care professionals on the challenge of Suicide and the prevention of suicide – their dedication throughout this programme is a credit to Hertfordshire.