Churchill Fellowship Suicide Prevention Programme

Webinar series: March to May 2026

About the webinar series

We’re excited to be partnering with the Churchill Fellowship to mark the culmination of their Suicide Prevention Programme.

Between 2019 and 2023, the Fellowship supported 28 individuals to explore innovative approaches to suicide prevention, intervention and postvention across the globe, in partnership with The John Armitage Charitable Trust and Samaritans. Together, these Fellows have generated valuable insights that can help strengthen suicide prevention efforts here in the UK.

Their findings will be shared in a new summary report later this Spring. But first, we’ll hear directly from them in a series of themed webinars, hosted in partnership with the NSPA.

How can leadership shape safe, compassionate and accountable suicide prevention systems?

Tuesday 12th May, 10:00-11:30

In this session, we will talk about what accountable, joined-up leadership looks like in practice, and how that can help to build systems designed for safety before, during and after a crisis.

The panellists and their projects:

Piers Barber. International perspectives on postvention in prison custody

Sgt Stuart Charlesworth. Broken badges, a comparative analysis of post-traumatic stress disorder in UK, American and Australian police officers

Professor Rhiannon Evans. Prevention of self-harm and suicide in children and young people who have been in foster, kinship or residential care

Rhea Newman. Building a whole-society approach to suicide prevention: learning from Japan

Previous webinars

Making visible and sharing power – data and lived experience in suicide prevention

In this webinar we heard from a panel of Churchill Fellows about vulnerable populations missing from national data and how data plus lived experience insights can identify gaps in our understanding. We also heard about international examples of suicide prevention that shifts towards power-sharing with people with lived experience.

Panellists Anna Wardley, Anoo Bhalay, Maria Roberts, Naomi Watkins-Ligudzinska and Tim Woodhouse reflected on their Fellowship travels and what their learnings mean for suicide prevention in the UK.

A recording of the session will be made available shortly.

Breaking the silence and building safety where people live and learn

In this session, we heard from Fellows about ideas and innovations in suicide prevention. We talked about how stigma and harmful cultures impact help-seeking and the importance of education, skills and workforce training.

The panellists and their projects:

Dr Ananta Dave Preventing doctors from dying by suicide: Constructing cross-organisational collaboration

Dr Pauline Milne Protecting nurses from suicide

Nina Smith School based suicide prevention strategies

Marsha McAdam Impacting Change – Engaging vulnerable traumatised young people

A recording of the session will be made available shortly.

About the Churchill Fellowship

The Churchill Fellowship is a national network of 4,000 dynamic individuals who are inspiring change in every part of UK life.

Churchill Fellows discover new ideas around the world and develop new approaches to current challenges. Fellows are funded to discover the latest innovations and best practice in any practical issue they care passionately about, anywhere in the world. They meet leading practitioners, engage with cutting-edge projects and create a report on their findings. Then the Fellowship supports them to share insights with communities and sectors across the UK and turn their ideas into action. The topics they explore cover every aspect of society and are often informed by their own lived experience.

Do you have lived experience of suicide?

Our vision is that lived experience expertise is embedded in all suicide prevention work and we work with people with lived experience of suicide through our Lived Experience Network.

Our Network centres and amplifies the voices and expertise of people with lived experience in suicide prevention. Through this network we strive to ensure that people with lived experience are involved in suicide prevention policy and practice, and that their knowledge is valued and respected.