Could our Lived experience network support your work?

NSPA’s Lived Experience Network strives to ensure that suicide prevention activity across the country is underpinned by the voices of people with lived experience. We believe that our work has more impact when it is informed by people with personal lived experience(s), and that the knowledge of those with lived experience should be valued, respected and seen as legitimate.

NSPA is currently working with 23 Lived Experience Influencers, and are about to begin training another group of 10-12 people. Influencers draw on their own experiences, and that of their peers, to inform suicide prevention work.

Since January, members of this group have taken on a range of roles and activities, including:

– Joining the NSPA’s Steering Group

– Joining NSPA’s Lived Experience Network Advisory Group

– Reviewing content on our website

– Speaking at an event to increase understanding of self harm, run by Chelsea & Kensington and Westminster councils

– Supporting recruitment of new Lived Experience Influencers

– Participating in discussion groups to inform conversations at strategic meetings

One of our Influencers has also recently joined the Department of Health and Social Care’s ‘National Real-Time Suicide Surveillance Leadership Group’, which has been set up to oversee and deliver a national real-time suicide surveillance system, building on the work done by Public Health England over the last year.

All of our Lived Experience Influencers have been through extensive training, and are offered ongoing support in their roles.

We also have an online Lived Experience Panel, which now has over 300 members. Panel members have been providing insights to national suicide prevention work by completing surveys. Topics have included: experiences of support during Covid-19; experiences of ethnicity,  support, suicidality and bereavement; and views on future priorities in suicide prevention.

If you would like to explore how our Lived Experience Influencers, or insights from our wider online panel, could enrich your work, please do get in touch with us by emailing livedexperience@nspa.org.uk.